"The Carter Chronicles"

My great grandfather, Thomas Carter,
and the ancestral home!

Three chapters in to the first draft of "The Carter Chronicles" (the working title for the first part of my family history) I realise that the research I thought complete is actually nowhere near! To put a lot of the action into context, I need to include much more background social history - so it's back to the drawing board before I can make too much more progress. I need to make haste slowly on this, to do proper justice to my predecessors of the last two hundred years.

Last night I finished reading "Just Me" by Sheila Hancock, a book which uses social history and discussion of her own exploration of it to great effect. I have always admired her acting ability but have only recently come across her writing - the fictional "Miss Carter's War" to start with, and now her autobiographical books. They are written in such a way as to concentrate of her ordinary, everyday life over the years rather than her celebrity - the ups and downs of family life, the grim reality of living through the second world war as a child - and she is candid in her discussion of her principles, her prejudices and what it took to shake them. Thoroughly enjoyable, and quite enlightening, reading.