All My Yesterdays

An enlightening appreciation of the British way of life through the twentieth century during which the manufacture of motorcars, for instance, was a major factor in our economy. As with the building of ships, our world-wide reputation for design and quality was gradually eroded and our markets declined in the face of competition from large national and multi-national companies in a much more industrialised world. In the 1920's, when the sight of a privately-owned motorcar on our roads was fairly rare, no one would have believed that by the end of the century we would be contemplating the nightmare of gridlock by the year 2020. This book also recalls the failure of the much vaunted League of Nations in Geneva in the 1930's (forerunner of the United Nations Assembly) to halt the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany which led to the Second World War and its terrible consequences. Perhaps any such organisation can only succeed with an "International Rescue" type military force empowered to oversee its democratic decision? A reader might find the author's experience of meeting members of the Hitler Youth Movement in 1935 quite interesting. A few short years after they spoke together as friends they were on opposite sides in a brutal war. Most fascinating of all was the splendid character of the transport of the first half of the century; from great passenger liners which graced the world's oceans in such ornate style and luxury to the classic railway steam engines and not least, the fabulous American-dream automobiles. Surpassing all of this was the decade of the 1960's! Commencing with the Soviet Union's Sputnik, a year later, in 1961, their first cosmonaut, Major Yuri Gagarin, took mankind's first step into space and in 1969 came the American's epoch Moon landing. From this unique period came the invention of micro-chip technology, satellite communications and mobile phonetics which have since revolutionised and so much benefitted our way of life.