King's Cross Kid: A London Childhood between the Wars - Hardcover

Gregg, Victor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408840502 ISBN 13: 9781408840504

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

Victor Gregg (b.1919) joined the army in 1937 and in Rifleman (2011), he told the story of his service in the Rifle Brigade in Palestine, Alamein and Arnhem. Here, he goes back to his childhood and teenage years on the 'mean streets' of King's Cross, Soho and Bloomsbury. Victor's memoir evokes how, abandoned by his father and living in poverty, the family struggled and survived in the familiar, yet strange world of London between the wars. Slightly off-mint.

About this title

Review:

Evocative, detailed and unsentimental - gets us wonderfully close-up to the London of the 1930s viewed through the unblinking eyes of a working-class boy relishing every new experience (David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain)

An urchin's story that does for London what The Road to Nab End did for Lancashire ... a vivid recreation of a street life of poverty and insecurity richly infused with great warmth, mischief and humour (Juliet Gardiner, author of The Thirties: An Intimate History)

Vic's honesty and warmth shine through this engaging story (Choice Magazine)

Intensely moving **** (Juliet Gardner, Mail on Sunday)

A gripping life-story: an incident-packed account of heartache, violence and cunning by a man whose will to survive and unbreakable optimism are a true inspiration (Independent on Rifleman)

Completely fascinating ... It has an immediate power throughout that makes war fiction a pale shadow of the real thing (Conn Iggulden)

Second World War memoirs are commonplace, but very few soldiers had Victor Gregg's breadth and depth of experience ... Rifleman is an outstanding book that deserves to become a classic (Lloyd Clark, author of Arnhem)

As action-packed as any fiction, and yet this is no novel ... His is truly an astonishing story (James Holland, author of The Battle of Britain and Fortress Malta)

Quite simply, it is one of the best first-hand accounts by a combat infantryman that I have read ... This gripping book immediately joins a select band of the best soldiers' stories told from the sharp end. It is a classic ***** (Gary Sheffield, Mail on Sunday)

His coldly factual account of the torments of its burned-to-death victims exceeds in power even Kurt Vonnegut's famous fictional account, Slaughterhouse Five ... Warrior Gregg has seen and experienced the stuff of nightmares, but remains a chirpy optimist in his 90s (Daily Mirror)

Book Description:

This highly entertaining prequel to the same author's best-selling Rifleman is set to become one of the classic accounts of a London working-class childhood and youth

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408840502
• ISBN 13: 9781408840504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Stroud Rick