Liverpool Writer - Frank Shaw

Frank Shaw

Frank Shaw was one of Liverpool's great writers, known for his 'Lern yerself Scouse' book, Frank was a prolific writer and published many titles.

This biography has been adapted largely from Frank Shaw's penultimate book You Know Me Aunty Nelly, published by Wolfe Publishing Ltd in 1970.


Frank Shaw wrote a good deal and appeared before the public a good deal and, in both capacities, was very versatile. But his work, at least in the last twenty years of his life, was usually about Liverpool in some form or other. In everything he wrote during that time there was some reference to Liverpool, especially its unique adenoidal dialect, Scouse, which he spoke fluently. ‘I’ve been writing since I was a schoolboy fifty years ago’, Frank said. ‘ Don’t know when I didn't write, I wrote a play at ten, a hymn to the Trinity before that, had poems in print in my teens. But my first stuff in print was when I was eleven, in St Francis Xavier’s College Magazine. I was writing about Scouse then, with, believe it or not, the uncle of Peter Moloney, my rival in the Scouse industry - though I was the first in it. But for twenty years I wrote about history, politics, short stories set elsewhere and never mentioned the dear old ’Pool.’
Father of four, grandfather of six, he retired from H M Customs in 1968. ‘I worked full-time for them for forty years while being a part-time writer. Unkind superiors put it the other way about. Now I’m a full-time writer.’

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GPKPcJrEh4...EL._SX300_.jpg