Colin Miller

I was born 05 August 1940 in the village of Rollesby, near Gt Yarmouth. I was educated at Gt Yarmouth Grammar School and the Universities of Leicester and Bath. In 2002, I retired from my post as Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at UWE, Bristol. Like many young people, I spent most of my youth wishing for the future instead of enjoying the present to the full. Now, in my later years, I am trying to recapture memories of those times in my books, and to appreciate them as I should have done then.

Country Boy; Growing up in Norfolk 1940-60, describes the everyday world of an ordinary country-born working class boy growing up in a small village. An experience I shared with many contemporaries, not only in Norfolk but also throughout a greater part of rural Britain. The Fifties Replayed; a Norfolk Youth at Leisure describes in more detail the leisure time activities of my youth during the 1950s.

In 1962, the Leicester University Musicals and Operatic Society (an alias for the university’s first rock ‘n’ roll band, Aztec & the Incas) staged an original rock musical containing nine original songs composed by members of the band, which were considered by the Leicester press to be equal to any popular tune of the day. Formed in 1961, the Incas – Rod Davies, Trevor Smith, Russ Dear, me (Colin ‘Dusty’ Miller) and Eric Flitney – were regular performers at university dances from 1961 until 1963. A Degree of Swing; Lessons in the facts of life; Leicester 1958-64, recalls memories of my life as a student at Leicester University and the many challenges and changes that affected young people of that time.