From Country Lanes to Motorway
A Journey Revisited
by Tony Doherty
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Pub Date 28 Jul 2024 | Archive Date 2 Aug 2024
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Description
A true story of life as a child during the Second World War and through adolescence and teenage years in the 1950s and early 1960s. A time of worry and fear for parents, but of excitement and adventure for children. The freedom to roam and fanaticise without supervision and learning from real life experiences. Near misses which today would be considered unbelievably neglectful and dangerous. Working on the farm at fourteen. Joining the army cadets at thirteen to learn to be a soldier and going to summer camp to fire blank bullets from a .303 rifle at your mates was all good fun.
On the downside, it was a time when waiting for your call-up papers at eighteen was routine. Then having to drop whatever you were doing to spend two years in the army, training as a real soldier in West Germany, or some other far away commonwealth outpost, and finally, to be demobbed as a disciplined but totally different person. All indications that at the time, you did what was required of you without fear or favour.
A Note From the Publisher
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781805149606 |
| PRICE | £7.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Robin P, Reviewer
Reading what is effectively an autobiography of someone I have never heard of, yet alone met, and isn't a celebrity in the modern sense of the word, should not have been a particularly rewarding experience, but it most certainly was. The book comes to life when Tony Doherty takes a holiday job at a farm local to his home in the rural Midlands. It's the mid-1950s and the author has a fine grasp of period and place and paints an evocative picture of a way of life now long lost to modern methods.
There's a wealth of social history here, all brought to life in minute and fascinating detail. Post War rationing and austerity gives way to the economic boom of North Sea oil and gas. The author's childhood freedom amongst family and farmyards is replaced in adolescence with training in new skills and a move further north to a place where coal and gas are already giving way to the nuclear colossus at Sellafield and the responsibilities of adulthood beckon.
It is the realism and truth of personal observation that elevates this memoir to compelling reading of the highest order.
