Description
Book SynopsisA poignant and very personal childhood memoir of growing up in Cumbria during the Second World War and into the 1950s, from columnist Hunter Davies Despite the
struggle to make ends meet during the tough years of
warfare in the 1940s and
rationing persisting until the early 1950s, life could still be sweet. Especially if you were a young boy, playing
football with your pals, saving up to go to the
movies at the weekend, and being captivated by the latest escapade of
Dick Barton on the radio.
Chocolate might be scarce, and
bananas would be a pipe dream, but you could still have fun. In an
excellent social memoir from one of the UK's premier columnists over the past five decades,
Hunter Davies captures this period beautifully. His memoir of growing up in
post-war North of England from 1945 onwards, amid the immense damage wrought by the
Second World War, and the dreariness
Trade Review‘He recalls his childhood growing up in Scotland and Cumbria in the Forties and Fifties,
capturing gritty working-class life with humour and charm and painting a vivid picture of that period of social history’ * Press Association *
‘
A cheery memoir of the Forties and Fifties… In among the rationing and the bombsites, this is really a love story between Hunter and his wife of 56 years, Margaret Forster, who died earlier this year… W
hat sets this book apart, though, is its avoidance of cliché and its determination to reveal everything that might be revealed’ * Daily Mail *
'Ken Loach might have turned all this into a powerful social film, but the avuncular
Davies sprinkles in so many cheery anecdotes that the book bounces along enjoyably' * Sunday Times *
‘Eighty-year-old Davies takes
a delightfully irreverent approach to his account of his youth and his days as a rookie journalist. Food was rationed, clothes were utilitarian and life could be rough, but there was fun to be had from friendships, films, skiffle and girls’ * Sunday Express *
‘
Davies is a wonderful companion, leading readers down memory lane with great chumminess that will really resonate with those of a certain age. This book deserves a place on the shelf beside Alan Johnson’s
This Boy as both are vivid memoirs of post-war Britain and testaments to the strength of women; in Johnson’s case his mother and sister, in Davies’s his mother and wife. Margaret Forster died this year. Her drive and intellect blaze fiercely in this book. A fitting tribute’ * Express *
