From Brickbats To Bouquets

Book Summary

"Sit down boys, my name's Stanway. Give me your names for a seating plan so that I can get to know you." "Tony Brown." "John Smith." "Gary Thompson." "Robert Davies." So far so good, then the rot set in. "Adolf Hitler." "Tarzan." "Mickey Mouse." All accompanied by a sudden and increasingly noisy outbreak of shuffling feet, coughing and derisive laughter... In this honest and touching memoir, Eric Stanway recalls his first years in the approved school system, chronicling the social realities of post-war Britain alongside his own personal journey. The story is one of false starts, failures and hard lessons learned, by himself as much as any of his pupils. It is also a love story, as Eric describes how a romance born from a wartime evacuation became first a marriage and then a rich working partnership. From Brickbats to Bouquets evokes a lost era, and its detail will be familiar to all who remember those years. But at the same time its message is timeless: that the damage done by fear, abuse and neglect can be mended through love, persistence and abiding faith - in God and in the resilience of the human spirit.

Book Details