King's Cross Kid
Subtitle A London Childhood between the Wars
By Victor Gregg
Published by
Bloomsbury
ISBN 9781408840504
Winter 2013
Synopsis
Ninety-three-year-old Victor Gregg has had a rich and fascinating life. King's Cross Kid follows his London childhood from the age of five, when life is so hard that the Salvation Army arrange for young Vic to be taken to the Shaftesbury Home for Destitute Children, to his enlistment into the army on the day of his eighteenth birthday.
Author's Biography
Victor Gregg was born in London in 1919 and joined the army in 1937, serving first in the Rifle Brigade in Palestine and the Battle of Alamein, and then in the Parachute Regiment at the Battle of Arnhem. He survived the bombing of Dresden to be repatriated in 1946 and now lives in Winchester.
Reviews
Evocative, detailed and unsentimental – gets us wonderfully close-up to the London of the 1930s viewed through the unblinking eyes of a working-class boy relishing every new experience’ David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain
Intensely moving **** - Mail on Sunday
His coldly factual account of the torments of its burned-to-death victims exceeds in power even Kurt Vonnegut's famous fictional account, Slaughterhouse Five ... Warrior Gregg has seen and experienced the stuff of nightmares, but remains a chirpy optimist in his 90s - Daily Mirror
An urchin’s story that does for London what The Road to Nab End did for Lancashire ... a vivid recreation of a street life of poverty and insecurity richly infused with great warmth, mischief and humour - Juliet Gardiner, author of The Thirties: An Intimate History
Price: £12.99
Intensely moving **** - Mail on Sunday
His coldly factual account of the torments of its burned-to-death victims exceeds in power even Kurt Vonnegut's famous fictional account, Slaughterhouse Five ... Warrior Gregg has seen and experienced the stuff of nightmares, but remains a chirpy optimist in his 90s - Daily Mirror
An urchin’s story that does for London what The Road to Nab End did for Lancashire ... a vivid recreation of a street life of poverty and insecurity richly infused with great warmth, mischief and humour - Juliet Gardiner, author of The Thirties: An Intimate History
Price: £12.99
Reader Comments
Victor Gregg's memoir brings London working-class life between the wars vividly to life.
A wonderfu and true evocation of a bygone age