George East

Just a Pompey Boy: 1 George East

It's the dying days of World War Two, and a child is born during a dramatic air raid that badly damages the family home and destroys the midwife's bicycle. At least, that's what George East's mother told him in later years. But then she also claimed that the painting-by-numbers picture of a bunch of sunflowers in the passageway could be a preparatory sketch for the real thing by Vincent Van Gogh. George's beloved but eccentric mother also claimed royal blood and that her ancestor and not Captain Hardy was the sailor Lord Nelson asked for a kiss as he lay dying on board HMS Victory.
In Just a Pompey Boy, best-selling author George East recalls growing up in Portsmouth directly after WWII, when fitted carpets, double glazing, central heating and TV celebrities would be seen as far-fetched science fantasy. In a memoir that is funny, sad, heart-warming and always immensely readable, the author recalls a very different time to be young and alive in a characterful if war-battered city which was the Nation's premier naval base. A time when bomb damages were literally adventure playgrounds, food rationing was still in force and post-traumatic stress and even the concept of Health and Safety regulations had yet to be invented.
As George remarks at the start of this first volume of his memoirs, the past has been said to be a foreign country; to the young people of today, this tale of a distant but golden childhood may seem to be about life on a very distant planet...