Beyond Nab End

All Books are second hand
William Woodruff
9780349116228

The Road to Nab End is a book that holds a special place in many people's esteem, so richly did William Woodruff recreate his life in Lancashire in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Woodruff was born into a family of Lancashire cotton workers, and worked as a delivery boy in a grocer's shop. But despite these unpromising beginnings, the author's skills at evoking a vanished era and the many colourful characters he encountered made for delightful reading. Beyond Nab End is the sequel to that remarkable book, and maintains the high standard of its predecessor. Woodruff is now 16 years old, and has decided to strike out from his familiar haunts, leaving the economically depressed Lancashire of his childhood to establish himself in London. But the East End of London proves to be a forbidding, squalid place, and his bedsit is hardly welcoming. In the streets, British fascism is stirring, and the author will witness the response of his neighbours to the Blackshirts, as the nation finds that it must gird its loins for the challenge of another world war. What makes Beyond Nab End quite as engrossing as Woodruff's earlier book is the fastidious recreation of a crucial and troubling time in British history, along with the individuals he encounters, such as his alcoholic landlady and her psychotic son, with whom the luckless Woodruff has to share a room. Most of all, it's the sprit of a people that the author conjures so vividly here: a nation in all its variegated character facing a massive threat from abroad. The first book had the always safe perspective of a child's vision; Woodruff shows that he can confidently handle the more complex challenge of the older narrator used here. (Kirkus UK)