Topic: Childhood and youth

In 'Don't Forget to Write', Pam Hobbs describes a time during the Second World War that was full of overwhelming hardship and devastation - yet also of kindness and humour, resilience and courage.

This memoir of a childhood in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia is about living through a civil war. It is about losing children and losing that war, and realising that the side you have been fighting for may well be the 'wrong' one.

This memoir of a childhood in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia is about living through a civil war. It is about losing children and losing that war, and realising that the side you have been fighting for may well be the 'wrong' one.

This heart-wrenching memoir from Toni Maguire tells the deeply moving story of an idyllic childhood that masked a terrible truth. Underneath her mother's gentility and her father's roguish charm lay horrifying secrets, which eventually led to their only child's near destruction.

During her childhood, Sally East's need to be told that she was loved by her father came at a price that no child should have to pay. In this book Sally describes a shocking story of a mother's neglect and a father's betrayal.

Focusing upon one summer in the 1960s when the author was eleven years old, Martin Quigley describes the characters and the way of life of those whose lives were spent around and next to the River Suir. During that idyllic summer the author found happiness but met with despair as well.

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its creatures. His memoir is the story of a boy's awakening to the wonders of the natural world. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds ...

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its creatures. His memoir is the story of a boy's awakening to the wonders of the natural world. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds ...

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its creatures. His memoir is the story of a boy's awakening to the wonders of the natural world. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds ...

For Moon Unit, daughter of musician Frank Zappa and his 'manager', Gail, processing a life so unique, so punctuated by the whims of creative urges, the tastes of popular culture and the calculus of celebrity, has at times been eviscerating. But it is her deep sense of humour and unshakeable humil...

Loved and renowned for her gritty and enthralling sagas of East End life, Sally Worboyes own story is no less engrossing and dramatic. In this book, she recalls her upbringing, living in a two-up, two-down, where her parents raised six children.

Gilda O'Neill has gathered together her memories and personal recollections of growing up in the East End of London. It was a time of unbelievable hardship and devastating change; yet also of great pride, kindness, courage, resilience and humour.

In 'East to West' Elizabeth Green recounts both the joys and hardships of her childhood in London's East End during the 1920s.

Mark Barrowcliffe, has a shameful secret. He spent his entire youth hiding from the grungy tedium of Coventry, in an imaginary world of elfs, dwarfs & magicians: he was a Dungeons & Dragons fanatic.

Millions of readers throughout the world have grown up with the stories and verses of A.A. Milne; have envied Christopher Robin in his enchanted world; laughed at Pooh - a bear of very little brain - and worried about Piglet and his problems. But what was it like to be the small boy with the long...

As a child I was aware of my mother being different from my father and his family, and that her difference was somehow connected with her being Irish, but I knew almost nothing of her youth and upbringing. In the year or so before she died, she did begin to talk to me about her past. The first se...

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards. This memoir recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshireto the main stage of Carnegie Hall in New York aged 21. We read of his ea...

Geoffrey Williams presents his story of growing up through the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, D-Day and the V1 and V2 raids that hit London in 1945.

The author was 4 years old at the outbreak of World War II. He describes his experiences of foreign troops stationed near his home and the fun that brought, as well as nights spent listening to German bombers on their way to attack London.