a more stable life. He worked at several labouring jobs before joining The Sunday People, working on the Readers' Advice Bureau for four years. He also married for the second time and become a father in 1963. Life as a writer and broadcaster His newspaper experience led him to becoming a freelance writer, specialising in radio scripts and also writing one story for the popular BBC TV police drama, Z-Cars. His major breakthrough as a writer came in 1973 with the publication of his first book, A Cage of Shadows, dealing with his life until the time when he stopped living rough. The book revealed his talent for honest and unsentimental narrative and led to the most successful period of his career. Over the next eleven years he wrote a further eight books, made many radio broadcasts as well presenting as a TV series. Hill also worked as a photo-journalist but very little of his work survives. Later life and death The publication of An Empty Glass (1984) revealed that problems with alcohol had resurfaced and his second marriage had ended after twenty years. It was the last of Hill's known written output and he then disappeared from public life. He died by suicide from Carbon Monoxide poisoning in 1986. Books published Autobiographical books A Cage of Shadows - 1973 This book covered Hill's life up to the early 1950s. It sets out, in unsparing detail, the family problems caused by his father's abusive behavior as well as Hill's own difficulties in early life. It includes unsentimental descriptions of the nature of working-class Black Country existence during the depression, including an account of a rat killing contest and portraits of his adult friends Konk and Pope Tolley. It also provides a harsh account of his experiences in a mental hospital, in prison and sleeping rough in London, before ending on a more optimistic note as he finds a new resolve to live a more settled life. The epilogue looks back on his experiences from the perspective of his life in 1973 when the book was written. The original text included material about Hill's mother which she considered defamatory. She successfully sued for libel and the book was reissued with an apology from Hill and most references to his mother omitted. The Tangerine Press reissued the original text in May 2017. The head of Tangerine Press, Michael Curran, considers it to