"The subtitle of Nick Eliason’s Cold War Candles says it all, in that this chattily-penned memoir is very much underpinned by a sense of adventure as the author shares his life experiences in an engagingly honest style."
“Adventures of a Seventies Seafarer” — the subtitle of Nick Eliason’s Cold War Candles says it all, in that this chattily-penned memoir is very much underpinned by a sense of adventure as the author shares his life experiences in an engagingly honest style. Demonstrating how life has a habit of taking unexpected turns (in this case, a turn from the prospect of working for free on an Israeli kibbutz, to joining the Merchant Navy, and eventually venturing beyond the Iron Curtain), it’s an evocatively authentic read.
“My last year at Alleyne’s Grammar School in Stevenage didn’t turn out well” — so begins Eliason’s story in 1971. While his father, unsurprisingly, wasn’t happy with his son not being allowed to return to school, the author was “ecstatic”, until he learned he was destined to work for free on a kibbutz, in order spend time with other young people, learning to “work together in harmony and become totally self-sufficient”. This didn’t sit well with Nick, whose friends “had already begun jobs which paid a decent wage. They had become independent and I had become rather envious”.
So, after fortuitously seeing an ad placed by the British Shipping Federation, a quick-fire turn of events saw Eliason enrolled in the Merchant Navy, bound for a career that saw him voyage around the world, on one occasion, aboard the QEII, no less. Sharing details of work done and friendships made through the years, there’s much detail on daily life in the context of bigger-picture events, not least when Eliason has a “brush with the KGB”...
Joanne Owen, A LoveReading Ambassador
| Primary Genre | Indie Author Books |
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Expelled from his grammar school in 1971, the author desperately sought an escape from the direction that life was taking him. The threat of working hard in an Israeli kibbutz without pay for the next year didn't appeal, but an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper did. The British Shipping Federation was offering opportunities to make a career in the Merchant Navy.
Experiencing life aboard all types of merchant ship, including a spell on Queen Elizabeth Two, there was always adventure on hand. This account is a chronological description of those experiences, compiled from contemporary records, letters, documents and photographs.
The author's career culminated in an audacious quest to venture behind the Iron Curtain in an attempt to marry a Soviet citizen. An unlikely, and ill-advised, relationship had developed during visits to the U.S.S.R.
Cold War Candles features in the following genres: Indie Author Books, Indie Books We Love, Biographies & Autobiographies, Memoirs
Cold War Candles is available in Paperback
Cold War Candles was written by Nick Eliason and published by Maple Publishers
