World's End: A Memoir of a Blitz Childhood

By Donald James Wheal

Book Overview

World's End is the story of Donald Wheal s childhood in Chelsea's World's End at the height of the Second World War.

Not for him the privileged bohemian world of Chelsea a few hundred yards away. Descended from rural immigrants, ladies of the night and bare-knuckle fighters, Donald Wheal s upbringing took place amidst grimy factories and generating plants, illegal street bookmakers, dog tracks, tenements and street walkers who plied their trade in Piccadilly and Soho.

World's End is the story of how he and his family struggled free from this underclass. It is also an individual history of the Second World War, of a small boy s grappling with the bitter separation of evacuation, the return to an already battered London, the wonderland of bomb-damaged houses to play in, and the nights of terror as the Blitz returned.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099474166
• ISBN13: 9780099474166
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Arrow
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 0.9" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

You come away feeling you knew these people.

This is an autobiography. The author brings the characters alive. You feel you're there with them living through the times and the blitz. Since my experience was through the audiobook, I can say Michael Jayston's narration is superb. With an audiobook, the skill of the reader is every bit as important as the skill of the author. This is a perfect match of both.