Publisher's Synopsis
"Once started it is impossible to put this book down." Alan Bullock, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 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, THE GUARDIAN From his birth in 1916 until he ran away to London, William Woodruff lived in the heart of Blackburn's weaving community. But after Lancashire's supremacy in cotton textiles ended with the crash of 1920, his father was thrown out of work. From then on, including the period of the Great Depression, Woodruff and his family faced a life blighted by extreme poverty. Reading this book today, it is hard to comprehend that within living memory - and in what was then the richest country in the world - so many people couldn't afford to buy enough food. 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".
