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AN OBSERVER AND DAILY MAIL BOOKS OF 2022 PICK

Melvyn Braggs first ever memoir an elegiac intimate account of growing up in postwar Cumbria which lyrically evokes a vanished world

In this captivating memoir Melvyn Bragg recalls growing up in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton from his early childhood during the war to the moment he had to decide between staying on or spreading his wings
This is the tale of a boy who lived in a pub and expected to leave school at fifteen yet won a scholarship to Oxford Derailed by a severe breakdown when he was thirteen he developed a passion for reading and study though that didnt stop him playing in a skiffle band or falling in love

It is equally the tale of the people and place that formed him Bragg indelibly portrays his parents and local characters from pub regulars to vicars teachers and hardmen and vividly captures the communityspirited northern town steeped in the old ways but on the cusp of postwar change A poignant elegy to a vanished era as well as the glories of the Lake District it illuminates what made him the writer broadcaster and champion of the arts he is today

P 2022 Hodder amp Stoughton Limited