Barry Ross

The author's family were forced to leave Scotland during the Highland Clearances, moving to London's East End district of Silvertown in 1870. Over the following years the family prospered. A close family with 20 children in all, they were at the heart of the Silvertown community, running the local shop and hairdressers whilst working as plumbers, part-time firemen and volunteer TA soldiers.

But fate would threaten them over and over again. In 1917, a TNT factory, 40 yards down the road from their terraced house, erupted in the biggest explosion ever seen in Britain, killing 97 of their neighbours but mercifully missing their family.

Then on Black Saturday, September 1940, London had its WW2 baptism of fire, suffering bombing by 365 tonnes of high explosives and at least 800 incendiary bombs aimed at the docks close by Silvertown, taking the lives of over 400 Londoners. Again, the family came off lightly, with only one grandson, Albert, slightly hurt.

Between these traumatic events, fate turned cruelly against them. David's grandson Artie, Albert's elder brother, was Reported Missing in Action for a period of 15 months whilst fighting against Hitler's invasion of France

Silvertown's Missing Son sensitively describes how the Ross family endured this roller coaster of events, leading up to the comradeship and growing tension in Artie's Artillery Battery during Hitler's blitzkrieg in Northern France and the impact of his disappearance on the family members; recalled thanks to a bundle of letters that the author found in a drawer after his father died.