The Road to Nab End / Edition 1

by William Woodruff

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781561310692
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	08/28/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.26(w) x 8.38(h) x 1.10(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

Extraordinarily well written and vividly told, his book is rich in characters, facts, atmosphere, and indomitable spirit. It is absolutely fascinating as a social as well as a family history.
— Eric Hobsbawm

Guardian

A masterpiece.

Independent Review:A Journal Of Political Economy

Once started it is impossible to put this book down. The author is a born writer with an eye for character and a natural way of writing...he has the historian's gift for bringing to life a particular society at a particular time, which marks his book out.
— Alan Bullock

Times Literary Supplement

A masterpiece.

Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy

Like finding a great recipe or discovering an old movie on video that may have escaped the notice of critics.

Gainesville Sun

Once started it is impossible to put this book down. The author is a born writer with an eye for character and a natural way of writing...he has the historian's gift for bringing to life a particular society at a particular time, which marks his book out.

Times Literary Supplement (UK) - Alan Bullock

Extraordinarily well written and vividly told, his book is rich in characters, facts, atmosphere, and indomitable spirit. It is absolutely fascinating as a social as well as a family history.

Guardian - Eric Hobsbawm

A masterpiece.

Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy

Extraordinarily well written and vividly told, his book is rich in characters, facts, atmosphere, and indomitable spirit.
—Guardian

Eric Hobsbawm

Once started it is impossible to put this book down. ...A born writer with an eye for character...he has the historian's gift for bringing to life a particular society at a particular time ...
—Times Literary Supplement

Alan Bullock

A masterpiece.

Independent

Like finding a great recipe or discovering an old movie on video that may have escaped the notice of critics.

Gainsville Sun