Part nostalgic reverie, part social history, part travelogue, Last Train To Hilversum is Connelly's love letter to radio, exploring our relationship with the medium from its earliest days to the present in a journey from the wireless to wireless.
Despite the all-pervading influence of television an astonishing ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. In Last Train To Hilversum Charlie Connelly explores the place of radio in our world, taking stock of the history of the medium and celebrating its role as one of the very few genuinely shared national experiences. He explores some of the geniuses, crackpots and charlatans who helped to give us the radio we know today, talks to some of our great contemporary broadcasters from Corrie Corfield to Cerys Matthews, visits Britain's smallest commercial station and amplifies the voices, personalities and programmes that have helped to form who we are as individuals and as a nation.
"Charlie's book is utterly charming - witty, warm, tender, deeply evocative and so intelligently written." DAISY BUCHANAN
One forgotten street, 12 unforgettable women.''Ang on boy, Joan's got sumfink to show yer.' She rummaged in a drawer for a moment, pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.'Constance Street,' she said. 'As I remember it.'Through the story of one street - Constance Street - we hear the true life tales of a tight knit group of working class women in the East End of London set against a backdrop of war, hardship and struggle.It's a story of matriarchy and deep family ties, of a generation that was scattered away from the street during the blitz bombings, but which maintained the ties of that street for decades afterwards.Set in an area of East London called Silvertown, a once thriving docking community that at the turn of the 20th century was the industrial heartland of the south of England; the story focuses on the lives of 12 incredible women and their struggle to survive amidst the chaos of the war years.We have Nellie Greenwood, the author's great grandmother who runs a laundry in Silvertown which becomes the focal point of the community. In 1917 a munitions factory in Silvertown explodes flattening much of the surrounding area and causing extensive damage to Constance Street - Nellie's daughter is blown from her crib but miraculously survives.Deciding to open the laundry as a field hospital for the injured, Nellie and the women on the street come together to tend the wounded, the sick and the emotionally shattered as they cope with the aftermath of not just one but two world wars.Through the Great War, the roaring Twenties, the Depression and then the unimaginable - the outbreak of a second world war - Nellie and the street survive with love, laughter and friendships that bind the community together. But just as this incredible group of women live through the worst, the unthinkable happens. On 7 September 1940, Constance Street is no more.Following in the footsteps of Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth and The Sugar Girls, Constance Street is a life-affirming, heart-warming read that reminds us of a time when people pulled together.
Bestselling author Charlie Connelly returns with a First World War memoir of his great uncle, Edward Connelly, who was an ordinary boy sent to fight in a war the likes of which the world had never seen.But this is not just his story; it is the story of all the young forgotten soldiers who fought and bravely died for their countryThe Forgotten Soldier tells the story of Private Edward Connelly, aged 19, killed in the First World War a week before the Armistice and immediately forgotten, even, it seems, by his own family.Edward died on exactly the same day, and as part of the same military offensive, as Wilfred Owen. They died only a few miles apart and yet there cannot be a bigger contrast between their legacies. Edward had been born into poverty in west London on the eve of the twentieth century, had a job washing railway carriages, was conscripted into the army at the age of eighteen and sent to the Western Front from where he would never return.He lies buried miles from home in a small military cemetery on the outskirts of an obscure town close to the French border in western Belgium. No-one has ever visited him.Like thousands of other young boys, Edward's life and death were forgotten.By delving into and uncovering letters, poems and war diaries to reconstruct his great uncle's brief life and needless death; Charlie fills in the blanks of Edward's life with the experiences of similar young men giving a voice to the voiceless. Edward Connelly's tragic story comes to represent all the young men who went off to the Great War and never came home.This is a book about the unsung heroes, the ordinary men who did their duty with utmost courage, and who deserve to be remembered.
We talk about the weather a lot. It exasperates, confounds and on occasion delights us. Our national conversation is dominated by the weather, but how much do we really know about it? Charlie Connelly sets off on the trail of our island obsession: he breezes through the lives of meteorological eccentrics, geniuses, rainmakers and cloud-busters and brings vividly to life great weather events from history.
Bring Me Sunshine answers all your weather questions as well as helping you to distinguish your graupel from your petrichor.
