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QueenSpark Books Archive - Free Full Text Books
A unique searchable archive of the books published by QueenSpark Books up until 2010. Free to view and full text this collection features voices that tell the story of Brighton and Hove, across the 20th Century, in their own words. The majority of these titles are now out-of-print.
You can buy those still in-print, and newer titles, with this link.
I do like to be beside the Seaside - Writing from a weekend at Corsica Hall, Seaford July 1993
Author(s): Various
Published: 1994
This selection of creative writing is the cumulative work of fifty people, who attended a writing weekend in Seaford, East Sussex in July 1993. There were four workshops in total, including one on autobiography and personal histories, one on poetry, one on storytelling from images and one on drama. From the beginning of the course, a sense of warmth, trust and mutual support was established which helped to foster the creative output that is published in this book. It is a testimony and celebration to a few very special days spent by the sea that proves how inspirational the sea air can be.To be a Farmer’s Boy
Author(s): George Noakes
Published: 1977
This tells of George Noakes's childhood and early adult working life before he married Daisy, author of The Town Beehive and The Faded Rainbow, in 1934. George reminisces about his childhood farm memories and forays to the local shops and surrounding areas; for example, when he visited the local bakers, he always knew that a sugar bun would be given to him. When he was old enough to be trusted outside, he ventured everywhere. In short, he had an idyllic childhood, in an era where children had much more freedom to roam "without today's safety worries" and he progressed from a boy into a happy adolescent and adult.Refuge - Stories of Survival & Escape
Author(s): The Migrant English Project at The Cowley Club
Published: 2007
The Migrant English Project at The Cowley Club offered language classes to newly arrived migrants to Brighton and Hove. This book is the result of a series of workshops where participants had the opportunity to tell their stories.Pebble on the Beach
Author(s): Tony Diamond
Published: 2006
"Back in the 1950s and 60s what the man in the white coat said, stood ....." Pebble on the Beach is the true story of one boy's ability to survive. Growing up in Brighton, England, Tony was subjected to a childhood of physical and mental abuse - including electric shock treatment at the age of ten - abandoned by his family at fifteen, and sent to Australia to fend for himself. Unable to settle, wandering from place to place, he plotted his return to England, but an ill-fated attempt to stow away led to imprisonment in New Zealand and his eventual deportation. Having visited four continents, survived four brushes with death and a journey of 30,000 miles, he arrived back in England profoundly changed – but were things at home any different?Poverty: Hardship but Happiness - Those were the days 1903-1917
Author(s): Albert Paul
Published: 1974(reprinted 1975)
This book is the first that was published by QueenSpark. It tells the story of a working class boy's life in the years between 1903 and 1917, from his childhood through to adolescence. It looks at the hardships of life before and during the First World War and examines the ways that children's lives changed as a result of the Great War. Albert Paul was a retired carpenter who lived all his life in Brighton, and he describes in vivid detail the life of a boy brought up in poverty and his struggle against adversity.Our Small Corner
Author(s): Sid Manville
Published: 1994(reprinted 1994)
This autobiography is the sequel to Sid Manville's Everything Seems Smaller. It recalls memories of friends, neighbours and relatives who made up the 'small corner' of Sid's neighbourhood in Bear Road in Brighton in the Twenties and Thirties. Sid writes with much affection and humour, although he doesn't forget that this era was also a time of great hardship for working class people. His own mother and father struggled to bring up a large family at a time when it was considered fortunate to have any kind of job, no matter how poorly paid. Although times have changed, lack of employment is still a feature of many people's lives in the twenty-first century.Back Row Brighton - Cinema-going in Brighton & Hove
Author(s): Amy Riley, Martin Payne and Frank Flood.
Published: 2009
Back Row Brighton transports us back to the heyday of cinema-going in the company of those who were there. Alongside evocative archive photographs, names such as the Astoria, the Granada, the Continentale and the Regency are recalled in touching and humorous stories of romance, excitement, grandeur and, occasionally, fleas. Some of these recollections are drawn from QueenSpark"s rich archive, others are the recorded reminiscenses of elders of the city asked to recall cinema-going in Brighton and Hove in the 1930s and 1960s.Brighton on the Rocks - Monetarism and the Local State
Author(s): QueenSpark Rates Book Group
Published: 1983
Published in 1983, this book was intended to be the first of a new series, but is the only one that was eventually commissioned. It incorporates a collection of interviews, photographs and statistics, which are used to analyse how monetarism affected the economic policies that were pursued by the city's local authorities in the 1980s. When local councils imposed financial cuts from 1980 onwards, they argued that the cuts were necessary because of overspending. This text takes the view that monetarist policies are implicated in the decline in public services and critically evaluates the effects of monetarism on working people's lives, organisations and throughout the welfare state. It poses the question as to whether a different kind of economics was needed that was geared to need rather than to monetarist philosophy?Pullman Attendant
Author(s): Bert Hollick
Published: 1991
In 1935, fifteen year old Bert Hollick signed on at Brighton Station for his first shift on a Pullman Train. Working on the midnight shift from Victoria to Brighton, he learnt to ladle soup from a tureen at seventy-five miles per hour and serve a three-course lunch in a speedy fifty-eight minutes. A man of few words, Bert's life story is told in a succinct and concise style that nonetheless manages to convey wonderfully the atmosphere of the Pullman Cars, as well as providing interesting factual details of railway life. He worked at a time when a twelve to fourteen hour day was commonplace, and wages were a meagre two pounds a week, despite providing a luxury service to everyday travellers. This book is a must for all train and railway enthusiasts.One Camp Chair in the Living Room - A Woman’s Life in Rottingdean
Author(s): Margaret Ward
Published: 1988
Born in 1916, Margaret Ward describes her life as a 'winding lane' because of the many twists and turns it has taken. Her autobiography describes her childhood in Rottingdean, growing up amongst a loving family in the picturesque Sussex seaside village. For Margaret, 'nowhere in the world is there such a lovely place' to grow up. Her story moves from childhood, through adolescence and working life to her eventual retirement. She recounts the inevitable good and bad times that she experienced, in her story of family life in a close-knit community of a trusting bygone age, when villagers knew and trusted their neighbours, and could leave their doors open or let their children roam freely outdoors.