When Terence Kearey married for the first time in 1957 Britain was still recovering from the war years, and had further to go than anyone suspected. In the author's case, the economic pressures were exacerbated by a family which was expanding much faster than he had intended or could afford. The result was an economic and emotional downward spiral which ultimately led to the greatest crisis of his life. Finding himself fighting an emotional battle at home and an industrial one at work as he was caught up in the greed, selfishness and restrictive practices of post-war industry, he came near to...

This is a story about the passage of time, from a Norman invasion to a narrowly-avoided German one. It tells of the joys and hardships of life in rural southern England through the seasons and through the centuries. It relates how a family coped with poverty and penury, and how one day in the 1930s a daughter went off to work in a mill. In due course this particular young woman went on to become a lady's maid and eventually a London suburban housewife - and the author's mother. The tale is set in and around the town of Chard in the English West Country, although many of the events described...

This is the story of life in an English town and an English community as seen through the eyes of an ordinary English family - the author's own. It focuses on the years from the 1930s through to the 1960s and covers a period when the country was changing perhaps faster that it ever has before or since. From a familiar world in which life was simple and expectations modest, values were upheld and the community spirit prevailed, Britain was plunged into the chaos of war at a time when most people could all too clearly recall the horror of the preceding one. Never have the British people pulled...

On a summer's day on the Somme in 1916, one brave battalion lost half its men to enemy fire in an hour. What went wrong? Martha Kearey dressed in black for the rest of her life in memory of the four sons she lost on that day in the First World War, proudly wearing each of their medals in turn on Sundays. Nearly a century on, her grandson Terence has set out to do justice to the memory of his uncles and their colleagues with a full account of the role of their Battalion, the Kensingtons, on the Somme in the summer of 1916. The Kensingtons, guardians of the right flank on the battlefront at...