Merton Priory Press
an independent publisher
of academic and mid-market history
including new titles and reprints
9 OWEN FALLS AVENUE :: CHESTERFIELD :: S41 0FR :: Tel: +44(0)1246 554026
Email: mertonpriory@btinternet.com
Yesterday's Child
by Pat Watson
Set in 1930s Coventry and continuing through the Blitz, Yesterday's Child is a novel of working-class childhood, told through the eyes of the main character. Brought up by her hypochondriac mother and doughty Aunt Madge, with her bullying father a menacing figure in the background, Patty meets friends, neighbours and strangers in a series of encounters that are in turn comical, eerie and alarming. Though this is a child's story, it is not a story for children, and the reader is left with an enjoyable sense of unease.
Backgrounds include a midnight flit, a country house children's party, a seedy secondhand shop with an arsonist parrot, coronation celebrations, a wealthy old recluse in a decaying mansion, a stone-deaf piano teacher who once saw an angel, a seaside holiday with a drag queen among the pierrots, a dangerous escape from the Blitz, a war-time romance, and a convenient bereavement.Pat Watson, born in 1929, has been a writer all her life, previously of freelance journalism and non-fiction. A teacher for many years, she retired in 1983 to run an antiques shop in Warwick, where her vivid memories of her Coventry childhood led to the writing of Yesterday's Child. She has three children and four grandchildren, and now lives with her husband in Stratford-upon-Avon.
