Goodbye Sweetheart

Book excerpt: From the outbreak of the Second World War to the evacuation of Dunkirk, GOODBYE SWEETHEART follows the fortunes of the people who live in a working-class street in Portsmouth. Like any street, April Grove in Portsmouth has its good and bad neighbours, its gossip, scandal and romance. But the outbreak of war in 1939 changes everything - especially for the children. Uprooted from their familiar urban existence they are evacuated (some happily, some not) to the country. Then there are the teenagers, whose first loves are accelerated and intensified by the threat of separation; and men and women, too old to fight, who hold the life of the street together. Based on the author's own childhood memories of growing up near Portsmouth, this is a novel which shows us what England was really like then - a story told with such nostalgia and charm that you leave the world it describes longing for the chance to return.