Back in the Day: Melvyn Bragg's deeply affecting, first ever memoir

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When my brother and I went to stay with my mother's parents, there was an outside lavatory and the toilet paper was newspaper cut into squares.

Bragg indelibly portrays his parents and local characters from pub regulars to vicars, teachers and hardmen, and vividly captures the community-spirited northern town – steeped in the old ways but on the cusp of post-war change. I am biased: I have lived in Wigton since 1992 and taught for 26 years at the very school that Melvyn attended. Bragg] bears his audience in mind, never writing a dull or self-indulgent sentence and thinking about and celebrating other people on every page . Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. What a memory Bragg has for names and faces; he can describe the new furniture in his parents’ living room as if it were all still there, waiting to be dusted by his indefatigable mum.I will be forever grateful for his program “In Our Time” on BBC Radio 4 and for his books on Tyndale and King James Bible. Derailed by a severe breakdown when he was thirteen, he developed a passion for reading and study - though that didn't stop him playing in a skiffle band or falling in love. Change country: -Select- Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Republic Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Islands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Cook Islands Costa Rica Cyprus Czech Republic Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Fiji Finland France Gabon Republic Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Republic of Croatia Republic of the Congo Romania Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts-Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City State Vietnam Virgin Islands (U. But his huge commitment to study with the support of some excellent teachers brings huge success in his "A Levels". So many parallels, struggles for money and food, adolescent confusion and intense emotions, balancing a job with school, sports, friends, learning how to study, getting into the university against all odds, the girl back home.

The book details his life, from his birth to the point at which, compulsory national service having at last been ditched, he’s about to go off to Oxford – and detail is the word. For me the audiobook was somewhat flawed in that his own performance is at a speed quicker than his normal speaking voice as you would hear it on the radio or on the TV. The story of Bragg himself is a very impressive one but the autobiography isn’t as good as the social history. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).

His new memoir, Back in the Day, focuses on his early life and is a remarkable portrait of a childhood and adolescence, a family and a community. I did shed a tear when he received his A level and Scholarship results and the quiet but proud way his parents took the news. His years in the 6th form, his first love, and how he got to Oxford, or nearly didn't, rivetting stuff. If any of our current political leaders wants to create a vision that actually makes people want to vote, they could do worse than prescribe this to their MPs as required summer reading. I can’t hope to capture, in the space I have here, this book’s extraordinary emotional geography, let alone its strange, inchoate beauty; the way that Bragg, in his struggle fully to explain his meaning, so often hits on something wise and even numinous (when he does, it’s as if a bell sounds).

Into this perspective flash vividly drawn Wigton characters, such as the unfortunate Andrew, or Melvyn’s main mentor at The Nelson School, Spitfire pilot and then History teacher, Jimmie James (died 2020), to whom he pays a wonderful tribute. As a young boy growing up in rooms above his parents’ pub, we see that what he has achieved is praiseworthy. Melvyn Bragg's first memoir is outstanding - beautifully written -a book that reflects the importance of family life, education, the importance of inspiring teachers, the growth of relationships and the importance of belonging to a sense of place.Melvyn is someone to admire and is always interesting to listen to, and there are many fascinating vignettes in this, but there's also a lot of direct speech which feels a bit hard to credit, and a lot of Romantic place-focused stuff which I found a bit dull. Melvyn Bragg’s memoir, Back in the Day, is a portrait of the town in which he grew up, Wigton in Cumbria. Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which vividly evokes a vanished world. In other hands this tale would easily be the stuff of cliché, except that Bragg fills every memory and anecdote with both meaning and feeling . I understand what a huge thing this was at the time but I still found myself exacerbated by young Melvyn and his tortuous indecision about what to do !

It's an affecting and evocative account of his working-class upbringing in the small Cumbrian market town of Wigton and a vivid Cider With Rosie-style portrait of a particular place and time. His respect for the community is palpable, the respect for those around his deeply respectful and the respect for his parents is truly borne out of deep love for two people who sacrificed themselves for him. Cast loose from my own town of birth at 18, I responded emotionally to the portrait painted here of my adopted home, as seen through the loving but clear eyes of someone who went out into the wider world but never really left. His mother, Ethel, was illegitimate, fostered by “a Victorian matriarch” whom Bragg believed to be his grandmother until long after she died. In Back in the Day, Bragg revisits and reflects on his life spent in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton during the 1940s and 50s,.But those who have no knowledge of Wigton will still be moved and entertained by the books’ depiction of a northern community in the 40s and 50s, and the development within it of an important figure in the cultural life of this country. I gradually realised my “grandmother” was not my grandmother, my “uncles” were not my uncles… I massively regret that I didn’t ask some of the older people, later on: what really happened? This is the tale of a boy who lived in a pub and expected to leave school at fifteen yet won a scholarship to Oxford. The awkwardnesses of his understanding with his father, with whom so much had to be left unsaid given the nature of male emotional life in the 1940s and 1950s and the character of Stan himself, emerge very strongly.