Julie Norton has published six books which reflect various aspects of her life as well as her overriding interest in our closest living relative, the chimpazee.
Homing instinct and other stories
A collection of stories which highlight the ups and downs of family life, and touch upon the everyday problems faced by regular people.
They include a tech-savvy son who comes to his mother’s rescue; a toddler who can’t make himself understood; a bored husband who tries to come to terms with retirement; a cosmopolitan nephew who has Facebook problems; a mother who is torn between the young and the old; a mother-of-the-bride who needs some dress sense; plus other examples of the trials and tribulations of normal life.
A cup of tea that is forever England
These charming tales from 1960s London were written by her mother, Mira Harmer, while working as a feature writer for the Daily Worker which later became the Morning Star.
A cup of tea that is forever England provides a unique insight into the everyday life of working class families at a time when much of the country was obsessed with pop culture and the new social freedoms that came hand in hand with the advent of the contraceptive pill.
Nice Nipper
Mira Harmer spent her last years in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimers disease.
Julie Norton has skilfully entwined her visits to the home with Mira's own memories of her childhood in 1920s Marylebone, London.
Seventy years separate these two accounts in Nice Nipper, but the decades disappear as mother and daughter find themselves travelling back in time together…
Hero Chimps
These remarkable mini-biographies of some of the world's highest profile chimps feature space travellers, Ham and Enos; Michael Jackson’s chimp-child, Bubbles; Washoe and Nim, who learned sign language; Tarzan’s side-kick Cheetah; London Zoo tea-party chimps; and ‘actor’ chimps in TV adverts.
All were manipulated by humans to be substitutes for us, entertain us or act as celebrity accessories.
Hero Chimps salutes them and the many other unnamed and forgotten chimps who have done so much for humankind.
The ReservistThe reservist
“‘Sergeant, we lost eight drivers in that do. Can you train another eight by the end of the week?’
"I knew I was training men to die.”
The sergeant is Wally and this is the poignant story of his perilous journey through World War Two. Wally is ‘old’ at 30, in charge of raw young men, some still in their teens.
The Harmers of Marylebone
A unique insight into family life behind and above a secondhand furniture shop in the Marylebone slums at the beginning of the 20th century.