Home Page
Home
About
Books
Media
Music
Studies
Books>Index
The Stranger in the Cemetery
Stranger in the Cemetery (The)

Geoffrey Bingham

by Rev. Geoffrey Bingham

Subject: Short Stories, Essays

Book Code: 254

Pages: 284 pp, Book

Pub. Date: 1991

ISBN: 0 86408 141 3

Download 709 kb

Angel Wings

The Concentration Camp

The Vandal

More Stories

Stranger in the Cemetery (The)

ABOUT THIS BOOK

THE STRANGER IN THE CEMETERY might well have been called The Sixth Smorgasbord because it follows five books of a unique kind of writing, containing poetry, essays and stories. Commencing with the well-known Angel Wings and The Concentration Camp, it follows on the heels of The Vandal recently published.

It is a smorgasbord. Here and there a story appears, now and then a poem, and often essays form themselves on subjects close to the author's heart. That heart has a great enthusiasm for humanity—for men and women—all of whom are miracles of creation to him. Sometimes they are miracles of great grace. Because he knows God he also knows humanity—that living and dynamic race which loves and hates, which is sometimes in anger, and sometimes in great tranquillity. It is his joy and passion to trace out the theology of God and humanity which has kept Geoffrey Bingham writing for over fifty years.

It is the human response which many readers have which has also helped him prepare a table for this further smorgasbord.

____________________

Geoffrey Bingham was born on 6 January 1919 at Goulburn, NSW. By his early teens Geoffrey was writing poety and short stories and editing small magazines. Within a few years some of his work was being published.

In 1939 he entered Moore Theological College. His studies were put in abeyance after his enlistment in the AIF in 1940. He became a sergeant in Stb Division Signal Unit.

Geoffrey's experience of war was life-changing. He was decorated with the Military Medal and also mentioned in despatches. He was badly wounded in action on Singapore Island, hospitalized and taken to Changi POW Camp.

He returned to Australia in 1946 and was suddenly hailed as one of the new generation of short story writers. In a few years the Bulletin had published 34 of his stories and be had won a prize in the Sydney Morning Herald literary competition. He was also published in other journals and the ABC broadcast many of his stories.

He married Laurel Chapman in 1946 and they moved to a farm on the north coast of NSW. Eventually he returned to his theological studies and was ordained into the Anglican Church. He served as rector at the Garrison Church, Miller's Point until 1957 and then became a missionary in West Pakistan. He returned to Australia in 1966 and was appointed Principal of the Bible College of South Australia. In the early 1970s he founded New Creation Publications and Teaching Ministry and returned to writing with great enthusiasm.

He has published numerous volumes of short stories and has seen his work published in some fine journals and compilations.

He is currently writing with that immense vigour which has so characterized his previous work.

 

Coromandel East 1991