Sugar Mice and Sticklebacks

Childhood Memories of a Hertfordshire Village Lad

by Harry Edwards

The Book Castle, 1998, ISBN 1 871199 88 3

Paperback, 21*15 cm, 72 pages, 16 photographs

This is a personal account of life in Hertingfordbury as seen by a schoolboy during the 1930s, and is illustrated by a number of photographs, some at least being taken later than the period written about. 

Chapter Headings: The Village; My Home; The School; The Church; The Flyers (relates to the nearby de Havilland factory); The "White Horse"; The River; The Cricket Field; The Railway Station; Sunday School; The End of Childhood.

There is a fault, which is common to many such memoirs, and that it does not say when the writer was born, which can make it hard to correlate with events elsewhere in Hertfordshire. Fortunately two events are mentioned which are accurately datable. His earliest memories was seeing the airship R100, which was mothballed after the crash of the R101 in 1930. The book ends with puberty and the outbreak of war in 1939. There is also no index.

There is a web page for Hertingfordbury

Last updated October 2004