Road to Nab End: A Lancashire Childhood - Softcover

Woodruff, William

3.98

913 ratings by Goodreads

9781561310692: Road to Nab End: A Lancashire Childhood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1561310697 ISBN 13: 9781561310692

Publisher: New Amsterdam Books, 2001

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A bestseller in England and celebrated as one of the great memoirs in many years, The Road to Nab End is a marvelously evocative account of growing up poor in a British mill town. From William Woodruff's birth in 1916 (in the carding room of a cotton mill) until he ran away to London at the age of sixteen, he lived in the heart of Blackburn's weaving community in the north of England. But after Lancashire's supremacy in cotton textiles ended with the crash of 1920, his father was thrown out of work. From then on, Billy and his family faced a life blighted by extreme poverty. For the ordinary families of Lancashire, unemployment was an ever-present fear: "If you worked you ate. If there was no work you went hungry." Billy's boyhood was not all misery. Working-class pride and culture made for tight family and neighborhood bonds and added savor to the smallest pleasures in life. Mr. Woodruff writes with an understated lyricism and an eye for telling details that effortlessly pulls us into another time and place.

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About the Author:

William Woodruff was born in 1916 into a family of Lancashire cotton workers. Leaving school at 13, he became a delivery boy in a grocer's shop. In 1933, with bleak prospects in the north of England, he decided to try his luck in London. In 1936, with the aid of a London County Council Scholarship he went to Oxford University. During the Second World War he fought with the British Army in North Africa and the Mediterranean region. In 1946 Woodruff renewed his academic career. He is a world historian whose work has been widely translated. Woodruff has seven children and lives in Florida.

From AudioFile:

Sam Kelly's experience in radio stands him in good stead as he makes a hardscrabble 1920s Lancashire childhood come alive. Growing up in the center of declining British cotton mills amid hunger, smoke, strikes, and unemployment could be a depressing experience, but Woodruff's prose and Sam Kelly's fully voiced reading bring out the joys of first love, the devotion of a pet dog, and the humorous side of employment. Kelly picks up on the affection of a young boy for his proud but penniless grandmother and his enthusiasm for the simple entertainments of the pre-TV world. The local accent poses no problem; he also does a fair "Churchill," who speaks in the local square, and sings several songs on key. The narrative ends with Woodruff's departure for London in his teens; one looks forward to the sequel. J.B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright � AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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