Sometime ago I started to write a biography of my father and mother's early years before their marriage in 1935 and up to the start of the second world War. There was plenty to go at as my father spent his young childhood years in India, he was sent back to Scotland for his education, served his time on the Clyde as an electrician, joined the Highland Light Infantry and went to war in France in the closing stages of World War I. He later went to sea with the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company for fifteen years and met my mother who was a stewardess. She had trained as a nurse at Cardiff Royal Infirmary and joined the CPRS to see the world.
The intention was to finish the biography just before the start of WWII when I was born but I then realised that I could remember so much of our famliy life during those war years. The role my parents took in looking after each other and my brother and I must have been very difficult, particularly during the blitz's in London and I realised once I started to write just how awful it must have been. There were the lighter moments of course and I've included some of those.
I was born in Ilford in Essex in March 1939. We lived there until 1947 when my father's company moved us to Birmingham. My parents are no longer living and the biography is intended as a tribute to them. I now live in Yorkshire with my wife of 39 years and enjoy life as a business man. My own three wonderful children have given me great encouragement in this project and I hope it will further help them to appreciate and understand the life of the grandparents they never knew.
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