Things that helped me remember. A Mass of Contradictions As a child, I adored motor cars and everything associated with them - garages, road signs, tax disks. I had quite an impressive selection of Dinky and Corgi diecast toy cars. I may have had James Bond’s golden Aston Martin, complete with bullet-proof shield and ejector seat, but most of the models were replicas of the saloons, estates and convertibles one saw on the roads at the time. If anyone in our family bought a ne

Between the wars, aviation became a national obsession. Besides the thrill of it, its potential for drawing the rest of the empire closer was increasingly appreciated - and unfortunately the Great War had also proven how effective it could be in attacking an enemy. Not that aviators were much safer in peacetime, in rickety wooden planes and gas filled dirigibles. R101 at its Cardington mooring tower (British Newspaper Archive) In November 2024, I caught a train to Bedford to

The everyday experience of ordinary people in any era has little to do with the words and deeds of monarchs and politicians, and everything to do with work, transport, shops, food, sport and pubs. These things are so common that an appreciation of them only seems to grow as they change or fade and disappear. In recreating the past, I aim to recall these things and immerse the reader in the period, which means getting the details right, as far as I can. Take a simple bus ride.

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. Between Caledonian Road and King’s Cross, if you look out of the correct side of the train, a break in the cables that run through the tunnels heralds a fleeting glimpse of the deserted platforms of a disused station. This was York Road which was closed on 17th September 1932. It certainly caught my imagination and I desperately wished that I co