The Road To Nab End

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 1405520450
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn -- a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup -- and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. Woodruff had to find his childhood fun in the little free time he had available between his delivery job and school, but he never writes self-pityingly, leaving the reader to shed the tears on his behalf. At ten his mother takes him on his one and only holiday -- to Blackpool. He never wonders where they get the money to do so, only where she disappears to with strange men in the afternoons, before taking him to the funfair, pockets jingling an hour or two later. NAB END is certainly not all grime and gloom however, there's a cast of great minor characters from an unfrocked vicar to William's indomitable grandmother Bridget who lend some colour and humour -- and all against the strongly rendered social backdrop of the 1920s and 1930s.

Beyond Nab End

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 9780349116228
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with him having arrived in Poplar in the early 1930s. On spec he turns up at a steel foundry and luckily gets a job. His digs are with an old couple in Bow where he has to share a single bed (head to toe) with their mentally retarded son. Life in the foundry is grim but William is indomitable. For recreation one day he cycles (then in the days before inflatable tyres) to Berkhamstead to try and track down an old girlfriend. She's not there and he has to return in a snowstorm - it takes him eight hours to get back to Poplar and then he has to get up three hours later to work at the foundry. Eventually he decides to 'get some leernin' and his first white collar job starts for the water board in ... Brettenham House! He continues to pursue his studies, finally winning a place at Ruskin College, Oxford. How the ex-steel worker became an Oxford academic - and William's concluding description of returning from the war to meet the son he's never seen - is deeply moving.

Billy Boy

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cotton manufacture
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description

Vessel of Sadness

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Abacus (UK)
ISBN: 9780349118116
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Italy, 1944 - this is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. Here, (distilled from the experiences and observations of one who fought with them in the British infantry unit) is the mood of those who fought and died at Anzio. Their task - to seize the Alban Hills and then Rome forty miles away. Instead, for more than four months, they sank into the mud of the Anzio plain and fought for their lives. Nothing has appeared since Erich Maria Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT that can compare with this book's ability to penetrate the minds of men at war. There are no heroes, no heroines, no victories. This is a faceless, nameless, fragmented war. Even national differences - Britain, Italian, German, American - merge and are forgotten in this larger story of humanity. This story, in fact, does not need to be Anzio; it could be any battlefield where man has faced death.

A Concise History of the Modern World

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349122349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description

Shadows of Glory

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Little Brown Uk
ISBN: 9780349116891
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Book Description
Woodruff's novel is about the fortunes of an Oxford University rowing eight, leading up to and during the Second World War. 1938: the Arnold College crew are a varied bunch, united only by the love of their sport and a sense that theirs is a generation which may have to fight for king and country. There's Charley Bradbury, a Scottish Communist and pacifist; David Evans, a chorister and super-boffin; Roger Blundell a witty dandy;Tony Markham, heir to a substantial estate and brother to four Mitford-type sisters; Pat Riley, charming somewhat mysterious Irishman; Alex Haverfield, handsome and a natural leader; Max Elsfield a dangerous self-destructive drinker and Bill Clark a naval cadet. As the war progresses they are gradually whittled away. Some, like Max Elsfield and David Evans, have been unhappy in love and have brought about their own destruction through reckless assaults on the enemy. Others like Charley Bradbury have had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - torpedoed on a passenger vessel from Russia. Ultimately this - like the Nab End stories - is a book about common humanity: the importance of virtues such as faith, loyalty and self-sacrifice.

Quarantine: A Love Story

Author: Katie Cicatelli-Kuc
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338232932
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Love can be contagious in this infectiously fun romance by debut author Katie Cicatelli-Kuc. Oliver wants a girlfriend, and there's a girl back home who might be interested in him. The problem is, he has to spend his spring break on a volunteer trip in the Dominican Republic. Flora, on the other hand, isn't really looking for a boyfriend. She just wants to end a miserable spring break visiting her dad and her new stepmom in the D.R.The solution to both their problems? Get back home to New York ASAP. Sadly, they won't be getting there anytime soon. Their hopes are dashed when Flora's impulsiveness lands them in quarantine -- just the two of them. Now, the two teens must come together in order to survive life in a bubble for 30 days. In that time, love will bloom. But is it the real thing, or just a placebo effect? In her debut novel, Katie Cicatelli-Kuc delivers an introspective and witty story about finding love in the most unexpected place.

Midnight Atlanta

Author: Thomas Mullen
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 0349144192
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
Midnight Atlanta is the stunning new novel in the award-nominated, critically acclaimed Darktown series, and sees a newspaper editor murdered against the backdrop of Rosa Parks' protest and Martin Luther King Jnr's emergence. Atlanta, 1956. When Arthur Bishop, editor of Atlanta's leading black newspaper, is killed in his office, cop-turned-journalist Tommy Smith finds himself in the crosshairs of the racist cops he's been trying to avoid. To clear his name, he needs to learn more about the dangerous story Bishop had been working on. Meanwhile, Smith's ex-partner Lucius Boggs and white sergeant Joe McInnis - the only white cop in the black precinct - find themselves caught between meddling federal agents, racist detectives, and Communist activists as they try to solve the murder. With a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr making headlines of his own, and tensions in the city growing, Boggs and Smith find themselves back on the same side in a hunt for the truth that will put them both at risk. PRAISE FOR THE DARKTOWN SERIES 'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment' Stephen King 'Superb' Ken Follett 'Magnificent and shocking' Sunday Times 'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you' New York Times

World of Warcraft: Dawn of the Aspects

Author: Richard A. Knaak
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147676137X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
"Contains the never-before-published prologue Charge of the Aspects by Matt Burns"--Cover.

The Crokinole Book

Author: Wayne Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Board games
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description