Wounded during WW1 and after briefly serving as a policeman in Ireland, Charles’ grandfather Alexander “Jack” Ambrose leaves his new wife and baby son in Colchester intent on starting a new life farming on the Canadian prairies, only to return to his family empty-handed four years later.

Why did he leave, what did he attempt to do, what happened, and why did he return? A century later his grandson Charles attempts to understand and connect to a man he had met only briefly, trying to reconstruct those “lost” years by writing a fictionalised account of this period in his grandfather’s life.

Charles Ambrose is the pen name of Chris Meigh-Andrews, a visual artist and writer who has exhibited his video and moving image installations nationally and internationally for over three decades. In parallel with his art practice, he is an academic, art historian and curator. Find out more via his website: https://charlesambrose.com/the-grandfather-paradox

Charles explains: “When I met my grandfather he was seventy and I was fourteen, and the gulf between us prevented any kind of connection or understanding. Later I found out that he had spent several years in Canada during the early 1920’s, but that was all anyone could tell me. I wanted to find out more about who he was, and what he had experienced and to write about it, but as I began to piece together the lost fragments of his story, unexpected coincidences, parallels and connections between us were revealed and woven into the fabric of the narrative.”

Note: The “grandfather paradox” (also known as the consistency paradox) is a temporal paradox that occurs when an aspect of the past is changed in any way, thus creating a contradiction.

RELEASE DATE: 28/05/2025 ISBN: 9781836282761 Price: £12.99