No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. Bragg and his mother, Ethel, were just coming out of the church, trailed by a great crowd of mourners because Wigton isn’t big and everyone in it had known Stanley. is set against an unforgettably affectionately drawn backdrop of kind but strict grown-ups who laced the place with a sliver of fear .

Above all, however, it is a warm look back on a life flavoured with the realities of life in England’s north-west and of a hard working student’s pathway towards academic success. By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. A fulfilling pleasure to read and to recommend to those who enjoy autobiographical writing at its very best.You can certainly hear it: darts hitting a board, a parkie (Bragg’s grandfather was one) shouting at disobedient boys, a choir belting out a hymn.

With a gentle voice, Lord Bragg presented recollections of his early life in Wigton, a delight to hear. Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which vividly evokes a vanished world. The best thing about it the book was the way it captured the culture of working-class life and displayed it in all its glory.I also went to a grammar school in the industrial north of England and from there was able to earn a place at Oxford (but no scholarship for me) taking me to an experience and subsequent life beyond anything my parents ever had the opportunity to enjoy themselves.

Wigton's streets become soot-streaked theatre for a huge cast of town characters for whom the author shows a convincing, rather than patronising, affection . Perhaps, having “stayed on” when everyone else has left, he will choose a job in the local civil service instead of putting his amazing brain to good use in a university. The whole community took pride and pleasure in the author’s achievements and he gives us some insight into the challenge of “thinking” himself into the role of elite scholar. 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. He was often moved to tears in his narration when reflecting and retelling certain special moments and I too wept as I listened .

a fascinating and often moving portrait of a time, a place and a working-class boy who fell in love with words and made a distinguished career out of using them extremely well. Derailed by a severe breakdown when he was 13, he developed a passion for reading and study - though that didn't stop him playing in a skiffle band or falling in love. 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 loved the story about falling in love with Sarah and their sexual explorations, fear of pregnancy which is so familiar to people of that generation.Please Note: By their very nature, all signed books will have been handled several times before they get to you. I can't hope to capture, in the space I have here, this book's extraordinary 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).