Mick Hanson

I was born in Bradford at a time when the city was in full swing. Mills & factories looked for workers. It seemed there were smoke and steam everywhere. Trolleybuses ran up & down hills, hooters blared at the end of the working day & thousands of people came and went among the cobblestones streets, a chattering mass of hopes, dreams and humanity. There was such a strong sense of community, the feeling of people living close to one another, sharing the same pace and momentum of life, the same interests and passions. And always that strong sense of work; coal mines, mills, factories, railways: over everything it seemed, hung a pall of smoke. It is all gone now. Communities crushed under the heels of what was then called 'progress' have taken their toll, and very little remains other than memories of what was and what had been.

I left the city many years ago. I joined the British Army, the only way out for so many working-class lads and after seeing some of the World, I was demobbed, and I went off to live in London, wherein my own inimitable fashion I got into trouble.

The books I have written are in some ways a watercolour reflection of those times.