1930's issues of Health and Strength magazine. Physical Culture In Until the Real Thing Comes Along , Malcolm Trevelyan, a young man...

Cigarette Cards In the 1930's they had their ‘celebrities’ just as we have today, but to a modern eye, most of their household names seem...

Between the wars, aviation became a national obsession. Besides the thrill of it, its potential for drawing the rest of the empire closer...

The twenties and thirties may have been before my time, but I have a wealth of photographs of my parents and their siblings to inspire...

I often claim that London boozers are my natural habitat. Centuries of dramas, great and small, from just one pub can feed the...

When I read a book or watch a film set in the past, I want to be taken there. I want to live it - to feel the good and the bad of that...

The everyday experience of ordinary people in any era has little to do with the words and deeds of monarchs and politicians, and...

Some of the many books I bought from Gay's The Word over the years. Growing up in a Saucy Postcard World The occasional sex scenes in my...

Rotary dial on a Bakelite telephone. An Uneasy Relationship During my childhood we had no telephone. I was led to believe that like taxis...

In the late 1980s, when I lived in Wood Green and worked at King’s Cross, the underground line I used most was the Piccadilly Line....

Those who have read Until the Real Thing Comes Along and When Summer is Gone sometimes ask about Charlie Brown’s pub, which is heavily...

It is fortunate for me, that the era I choose to write about is well-covered by some wonderful documentary films, as the genre was really...

To write about people in the 1920s and 1930s I attempt to immerse myself in the period as completely as I can. I listen to the music. I...

When young people buy gifts of music for older people they often assume that if it’s from their era, then they’ll like it. My brother...

My older brother Jos was writing books before I even started, having published several travel guides and articles. The real writer came...

A few readers have been kind enough to comment that the London I have tried to recreate in the first two novels seems real - in the case...

My second novel When Summer is Gone is published tomorrow, being the second part of The Likes of Us series covering the experiences of...

On social media, my eye is often drawn to old black and white images of familiar places, prompting a sense of nostalgia, often for a time...