Flickerbook

This autobiography is a re-living rather than a remembering. The children's author and writer on children and education, Leila Berg, re-experiences her early Jewish childhood and adolescence during the 1920s and 30s, up until the day when the first air-raid siren sounded. She introduces the sad, funny and passionate child who is seen growing through the years. Recounting the riches of Manchester - the theatre, the bookstalls, the music, the cinema, her joyful love of the surrounding countryside - she grows into a fiercely independent young woman, and joined the anti-fascists, then the Young Communists. Refusing to go to university, appalled by her brief experience of teacher-training college, she falls in love, but both her lovers are killed, fighting in Spain in the International Brigade. Leila Berg is the author of "Risinghill, Death of a Comprehensive School", as well as the children's books, "Little Pete", "My Dog Sunday" and the "Nippers" series.