Search results for ""author nathan dylan goodwin""
The History Press Ltd Hastings at War 1939-1945
Hastings was often bombed during the Second World War. John Bristow, describing a raid on 23 May 1943 says 'There was a god-almighty explosion and we went into the passage by The Havelock pub and we dived onto the ground and lay there looking out before a bomb hit what was the old Royal Oak Hotel. Along by Woolworth's there was a car going by and it was set up into the air by the bomb and over and over. While we lay there, there was another terrific explosion down the side of Plummer's and I'll never forget seeing a huge lump of yellow coloured masonry coming over an land on the tram wires...' This experience is one of more than forty people's memories, cleverly incorporated by the author into his vivid account of what Hastings endured when it was a 'front-line' town - and of its great defiance and fortitude in the face of the enemy. He tells how Hastings folk coped with the daily wartime hardships of blackout, rationing, the billeting of evacuees, the evacuation of the town, constant fear of invasion, and the relentless bombing raids, day and night, leaving in their wake a trail of death, destruction and the apprehension of where and when the next attack would come.
£16.99
Amberley Publishing Hastings & St Leonards Through Time
'Hastings and St Leonards, the charming marine resort of fashionable English society, possess attractions and recommendations that render the borough unique and unrivalled among English watering places. Strangers who have not visited the place are liable to be misled by the separate mention of the two names into the idea that St Leonards and Hastings form two separate and independent towns, which in fact they originally were. That stage, however, has long since been passed - ' The above extract was taken from the 1897 edition of Views and Reviews - Hastings and exemplifies how the town was regarded as a stylish seaside resort by Victorian and Edwardian society. The town eventually lost favour among the wealthier classes, which set in motion a steady decline, only worsened by the onset of the Second World War. But Hastings today is undergoing a process of change and revival; a number of developments have been taking place which are moving the town towards a position in which it is once again 'unique and unrivalled among English watering places'.
£15.99