Accrington Author Gabriel Undici | Lancashire Writer
Discover Gabriel Undici, an Accrington-area author writing Lancashire fiction inspired by Oswaldtwistle, local history, ordinary lives and forgotten stories.
Gabriel Undici writes stories rooted in Accrington, Oswaldtwistle and the surrounding Lancashire mill towns.
Behind the name is writer and postman Chris Whalen, whose fiction draws upon the streets, characters, humour and history of the area he knows as Accy and Ossy.
Rather than treating Lancashire simply as a backdrop, his work places local communities at the centre of the story.
Writing About Accrington and Oswaldtwistle
The world surrounding Mind The Trams grew from a fascination with ordinary Lancashire lives.
Mill workers, bakers, postmen, shop girls and families populate a fictional 1939 landscape inspired by Accrington and neighbouring Oswaldtwistle.
These are not stories about famous historical figures.
They are stories about the people who might once have passed one another in the street, stood at a bakery counter or waited for a tram home.
Mind The Trams
Mind The Trams is Gabriel Undici’s historical novel set against the approaching Second World War.
Its world has since expanded beyond the novel into the Mind The Trams Songbook, fictional editions of The Accrington Herald, period advertisements, short films and characters whose stories continue beyond the original pages.
Work is also beginning on the next stage of the project: developing the songs and stories into a Lancashire musical rooted in the same communities.
An Accrington Author Building a Lancashire World
For Gabriel Undici, writing about Accrington and Oswaldtwistle isn’t about presenting Lancashire as somewhere that existed only in the past.
It’s about remembering that extraordinary stories can belong to ordinary streets.
The mills may change. Buildings disappear. Tramlines vanish beneath modern roads.
But stories remain.
And there are plenty more Lancashire stories still to tell.
Mind Those Trams.