The Boy From Treacle Bumstead

Product Description

This brilliantly written memoir takes the reader on a journey into the past, to a rural England long gone, when horses worked the fields & small boys spent most of their time outdoors. Ken Sears was born in 1934 to a poor farming family in Hertfordshire
- the fifth child of what would be eleven. He learns how to fend for himself at an early age. His boyhood life coincides with wartime, evacuees & American GIs arriving in his home town of Hemel Hempstead (the Treacle Bumpstead of the title). At the age of nine he is caught stealing eggs & accused of killing a chicken (which he denies to this day) & is sent to reform school for five years. So begins a punishing existence, but it breeds a tough teenager, & after learning the trade of bricklaying he is called up to do his National Service in 1952. So begins his adventures in the Army, in Europe & Korea, where the ever-plucky Ken
- who has an eye for the ladies & is always landing himself in trouble
- finds not-always legal ways to make life that bit easier. After the Army he comes back to England & sets up a building business. From there he sees his home town change out of all recognition. The story is a characterful testament to the resourceful generation of the men who did National Service, fought wars, built towns & stood up to everything in their way. Ken's story reads like Commando Comics meets Fred Dibnah.