Victor Pemberton

Victor Pemberton is a genius at writing stories in and around the war years.  Every one that comes out is based in and around London and you can smell the atmosphere because he can put the sights and the sounds of Old London Town down so well on paper.

Set in Islington 1940, it tells the story of a family that spend every night down the shelter under the local piano factory, with all their neighbours. This story develops from where Beth works and their friends who they start to get to know because of the nightly air raids.

This is a very different story to some of the other books written by Victor Pemberton. This story is based around a retired navy man who has a shop that is pulled around the streets by a beautiful horse. His daughter helps him do the business, but she is really not happy with having to be up early every day, to stock the shop and go around the streets to sell the goods and collect rents from properties in the area.

Victor Pemberton's new book Leo's Girl, is set at the time when girls become clippies on the buses when all the men are called away to serve in the war. Many people find that this is not what they feel they want to see.

Goodnight Amy, Goodnight were the last words that Amy Dodds heard her mum say. I was enthralled by this book by Victor Pemberton, about Amy who has struggled to keep the family together. Her father does nothing to help and just gives her the bare minum to keep her family going. She works at the local Lyons Corner House as a 'nippie' some one who serves the tea etc in the corner house.

She meets a young man who becomes a good friend, and helps her to sort out her problems and all the things that pour into and onto her younger brother ans sisters.

Yet another book about war torn London during the blitz.  Victor seems to have watched London and experienced so much  that you can easily feel that this is happening around you today, especially with fireworks going off this afternoon on New Year's Eve.

Victor Pemberton is a great author who writes about ordinary people envolved with the war, and how they came through it.  This particular book is all about Nellie as she is named after she escapes from the rubble of the local orphange in Islington.  She joins up with a group of runaways who have made their way back to London after being evacuated to the country.

Flying with Angels you would expect it to be about the angels in heaven. No not this book it is about the angel family and the problems that enfold them during and after the war. How they loose their home and end up in a pre-fab. Dad works in Billingsgate Fish Market gutting fish from first light till late afternoon. One daughter works at Wookworths on the Hooloway Road and another is at college.

Yet another wonderful book by Victor Pemberton: the magical author of a series of books on life in London, This one is set during and around the time of the second world war and talks of the life of a fifteen year old boy who takes pity on an old German-Jewish widow who lives just off the Seven Sisters Road, after a series of pranks that he and the gang had played on people living there.He finds himself drawn to Elsa and into her world of books and a culture he never knew existed.