Back in the Day: Melvyn Bragg's deeply affecting, first ever memoir

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Please Note: By their very nature, all signed books will have been handled several times before they get to you. The first 200 pages are an impressionistic jumble of memories and feelings from early childhood; the second (the two are divided by a serious mental and physical breakdown that seems to come out of nowhere at the age of fourteen) show him developing a love of learning, literature and hard intellectual labour that would underpin his later professional life. is set against an unforgettably affectionately drawn backdrop of kind but strict grown-ups who laced the place with a sliver of fear .

The notion even of Workington – a nearby town to which his parents at one point threaten to move – fills him with horror. He discovers the enjoyment that can be found in books, in reading and studying and analyzing what he personally draws from a given author’s writing. It's an affecting and evocative account of his working-class upbringing in the small Cumbrian market town of Wigton and a vivid Cider With Rosie-style portrait of a particular place and time.a balanced, honest picture’ Richard Benson, Mail on SundayIn this elegiac and heartfelt memoir, Melvyn Bragg recreates his youth in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton: a working-class boy who expected to leave school at fifteen yet who gained a scholarship to Oxford University; who happily roamed the streets and raided orchards with his gang of friends until a breakdown in adolescence drove him to find refuge in books. Derailed by a severe breakdown when he was thirteen, he developed a passion for reading and study -- though that didn't stop him playing in a skiffle band or falling in love. Also explored intimately are the social pressures and conformities of living in an intimate community like Wigton, where there was togetherness and mutual help, but also lifelong marks of inferiority felt by his mother over her illegitimate birth, something that Melvyn shows her spending her whole life compensating for; his pride in the quietly triumphant way that she succeeded in this is unmistakeable.

In his new memoir, a book I was about to have to put aside for a few moments, Melvyn Bragg was describing the funeral of his publican father, Stanley, in Wigton, Cumbria, some time in the 1990s. I was walking down Walton Street and saw this big poster that had the spitting image of my girlfriend on it. But his huge commitment to study with the support of some excellent teachers brings huge success in his "A Levels". You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

just touching the 50s but no memories beyond a couple of photographs of me in an enormous pram outside our front door) and its a gem. Perhaps, having “stayed on” when everyone else has left, he will choose a job in the local civil service instead of putting his amazing brain to good use in a university.

But no Enid Blyton for us), The Goon Show on the radio (we listened to The Navy Lark, Educating Archie and Hoirney into Space, but these were a little later).It was his life before leaving for university that was my main focus and found his telling of it was so good. Melvyns words carried me back to a Wigton of my own fathers time , growing up myself in Tenters only yards from the Blacky pub I felt a real connection with the places and people Melvyn spoke so fondly of . There’s little I could express except the same choked up feeling that roughens his voice as he tries to make it through the last word of the chapter before the wave of memory drowns him.

Bragg says “This is about my life from the age of six to 18 in the middle of the last century at a time which now seems like another country. Be aware that this is written about, although it doesn’t cover many pages, if this would be a trigger. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including The Adventure of English and The Book of Books about the King James Bible.His mother, Ethel, was illegitimate, fostered by “a Victorian matriarch” whom Bragg believed to be his grandmother until long after she died. Bragg indelibly portrays his parents and local characters, from pub regulars to vicars, teachers and hardmen, and vividly captures the community-spirited northern town, steeped in the old ways but on the cusp of post-war change. A fulfilling pleasure to read and to recommend to those who enjoy autobiographical writing at its very best.