House of Ticking Clocks

A tender, kaleidoscopic memoir of a 1950s South-Coast childhood. Jinny Wilson gathers fleeting snapshots into an intimate portrait of family life - rooms alive with the ticking of clocks, a Portsmouth convent’s hymns and holy days, and the wider world intruding with Suez petrol rationing, polio vaccinations, and London’s Great Smog.

Each year the family returns to Somerset farm holidays: swallows on the barns, cider apples and evening milking, picnics on Dartmoor and the dizzy freedom of fields and lanes. For readers of Cider with Rosie and This Boy, this beautifully observed memoir celebrates place, belonging and time’s quiet miracles.

Readers who’ll love this are fans of Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie; Alan Johnson’s This Boy and Nigel Slater’s Toast