This tale tells the author’s story in the context of English history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Born to an ordinary hardworking family which could trace its origins back to 11th century Ireland, Terence Kearey emerged from a wartime Home Counties childhood to enter the world of work at a time of upheaval, technological revolution and trade union militancy. The women in his life helped to shape it, carrying him through the trials of family life, many economic ups and downs and the occasional disaster. Now retired and at peace, Terence can look back peacefully on a turbulent, but mainly happy, seven decades.

”The apprenticeship at Chatham Dockyard is the finest in the world – if you stick to it, the world’s your oyster” Robert Smith’s dad told his teenage son. When young Robert started there in 1958, the docks employed 6000 people on a two-mile long site encompassing hundreds of workshops, offices and storehouses as well as its own police station, fire service, medical centre, technical college and telephone exchange. There were three ship-refitting basins and eight main docks. Yet less than 30 years later Chatham Dockyard had effectively closed, with catastrophic consequences to the local economy. Robert did stick to his apprenticeship, and he has never regretted it. Along with the studying and the hard work there were plenty of good times, with laughter and practical jokes, scrapes with motorbikes and cars, encounters with extraordinary characters and moments of excitement – and frustration – with the opposite sex.

When Terence Kearey married for the first time in 1957 Britain was still recovering from the war years, and had further to go than anyone suspected. In the author’s case, the economic pressures were exacerbated by a family which was expanding much faster than he had intended or could afford. The result was an economic and emotional downward spiral which ultimately led to the greatest crisis of his life. Finding himself fighting an emotional battle at home and an industrial one at work as he was caught up in the greed, selfishness and restrictive practices of post-war industry, he came near to emotional and financial collapse. In the 1980s, helped by friends, family and good fortune he managed to recover, remarry and rebuild his life. After adventures in Spain and England during which new friendships were forged and old hostilities buried, the author finally found peace at last. This is the story of those years. A Distance Travelled is the fourth in a quartet of books by Terence Kearey dealing with aspects of life in Britain through the centuries from the perspective of his own family. The others are History, Heroism and Home, A Changing World and Country Ways. The author is working on a screenplay based on the first three books and a definitive account of the Gommecourt Diversion discussed in History, Heroism and Home.

Janet Andrews has enjoyed a happy and fulfilled life, as packed with adventure and drama, love and laughter as she could have wished. But it has not been a carefree one. As a young woman she developed an acute form of multiple sclerosis, which has progressed until Janet, now in her sixties, is largely paralysed with the exception of partial movement in one arm and hand. It has progressed to the point where she cannot get up or go to bed without the assistance of carers and a mechanical hoist. Yet her remarkable sense of humour and her love for her family and the world around her shine on undiminished. Funny, moving and inspirational, A Day In A Life is Janet’s story.

A Changing World is the story of life in an English town and an English community as seen through the eyes of an ordinary English family – the author’s own. It focuses on the years from the 1930s through to the 1960s. From a familiar world in which life was simple and expectations modest, values were upheld and the community spirit prevailed, Britain was plunged into the chaos of war at a time when most people could all too clearly recall the horror of the preceding one. Never have the British people pulled together so strongly as they did in the war years, but with peacetime in the 1940s came unexpected challenges – economic strife, a slackening of social mores and moral codes and a new materialism. With these changes came new attitudes to work and its rewards which would greatly hamper our recovery. Terence Kearey’s portrait of an England responding to the pressure of rapid social and economic change has the authority of meticulous research – yet its intimate perspective renders it far more personal and vivid than any ordinary history book.

A Changing World is the third in a quartet of books by Terence Kearey dealing with aspects of life in Britain through the centuries from the perspective of his own family. The others are History, Heroism and Home, Country Ways and A Distance Travelled. The author is working on a screenplay based on the first three books and a definitive account of the Gommecourt Diversion discussed in History, Heroism and Home.

William Rigg was born into a humble Cumbrian family in 1911, the fourth in a family, which would eventually grow to 13 children. After his mother died when he was three his father remarried, and he had to endure his stepmother’s favouritism and bullying. Often sleeping three in a bed and sharing shoes with his siblings because there weren’t enough pairs to go round, young Bill scarcely knew what it was to eat a decent meal. He would scrounge leftovers, steal turnips and potatoes to supplement the family menu and eat hawthorn and nettle leaves from the hedgerows. When the chance came to go to grammar school, he had to turn it down because his parents couldn’t afford to buy him a uniform. Despite all this Bill grew up healthy, happy and fulfilled, impressing employers in a variety of jobs from farm work and road mending to process work at a nuclear power plant, and raising a happy and successful family. He also served with honour in Italy, Austria and North Africa in the Second World. A Centenarian Looks Back has been written by William Rigg’s daughter Maggie to celebrate his hundredth birthday on June 29th this year.