The book details his life, from his birth to the point at which, compulsory national service having at last been ditched, he’s about to go off to Oxford – and detail is the word. What a memory Bragg has for names and faces; he can describe the new furniture in his parents’ living room as if it were all still there, waiting to be dusted by his indefatigable mum. His text has the feeling of an inventory, albeit a highly poetic one. Bragg is 82; the world he wants, and needs, to describe is now all but gone; time is running out. The writing is plain, in the sense that he wants to get things down, but there is something incantatory, here, too, as though some other force than himself was pushing his fingers across his keyboard. What makes one man succeed and another fail? What is learning for, and why is it better – of any more use – than stoicism and hard work? Then, as a young teenager, Melvyn has a psychological breakdown. At this point, he does two things. He discovers the balance and stability that being out in nature brings. He discovers the enjoyment that can be found in books, in reading and studying and analyzing what he personally draws from a given author’s writing. It was at this point I began to relate to Melvyn Bragg! Other sections, mostly near the end, I liked a lot too. Christmas and New Year’s town traditions are evocatively described. There is a bit about hounds that caught my attention too. I like very much the entire section about the teachers who helped him attain a higher education. There arises a conflict between the wishes of his parents and the possibility of his continuing his studies. My heart was pounding. I needed to know how this would be resolved. This was very suspenseful!

This book engaged me right from the start and I guess Melvyn’s childhood was not very much different to a lot of kids growing up during those years. I think he was fortunate in being an only child in some ways because his parents were able to support his choices whereas they might not have been able to if there were a handful of other kids to care for. His odyssey is emblematic of Britain’s post-war social evolution. An only child born weeks after the invasion of Poland, he grew up above a pub, passed the eleven plus, did well enough at grammar school to stay on at 16, and eventually won a scholarship to Oxford. That generational march was conjured up in his Cumbrian trilogy about a working-class family whose youngest scion blossoms into a globe-trotting television producer. King Street in Wigton circa 1955: ‘Bragg was almost paralysingly reluctant to leave Cumbria’. Photograph: The Francis Frith Collection/Melvyn BraggI’d have got into local government or gone down to the factory and worked in its accounts department or been a junior clerk. You used to help your parents in the pub. Can you still pull a decent pint? And how is your darts game? The audiobook is narrated by the author. He sounds so darn dreary. Listening to him talk is depressing. I didn’t appreciate this given the few hours of sunlight and the cold dreary weather I have had to deal with currently. The author’s speech is not clear; he mumbles. I did not like the narration, and this has nothing to do with the broad Cumbrian dialect. The dialect was not the problem! Setting the speed to 80% and listening to sections several times does make it possible to hear the lines. Two stars for the audiobook narration. Bragg should have gotten someone else to read the audiobook. Well, that is my opinion at least. His mother Ethel, born on the wrong side of the blanket, bore the inherited shame like a secret stigma. The Oedipal intensity of their bond is not quite a match for Sons and Lovers, but decades later Bragg would discover that she opposed his staying on at school as she knew that way she’d trap him in Wigton. His father Stan, by contrast, unobtrusively urges him to seize the opportunities denied to him. Even he is thrown when Oxford is mentioned. “That’s where the toffs go, Ethel,” he says. The rest is television history. This is the prequel capturing a period of optimism in British life when social mobility suddenly accelerated.

The best thing he’s ever written . . . What a world he captures here. You can almost smell it’ Rachel Cooke, Observer Melvyn Bragg – long-serving host of The South Bank Show and In Our Time, raised to the nobility by Tony Blair – has long been viewed as panjandrum-in-chief of the chattering classes. But he has never let himself, nor anyone else, forget that he hails from an ordinary rural town in Cumbria. Wigton is as essential to his humble northern origin story as Leeds is to Alan Bennett or Wakefield was to David Storey. This proves to me one thing very loud and clear. Do not give up on a book too soon. A book you dislike at the start can turn around and give you something very special and meaningful, something that speaks to you, something that you will be glad not to have missed! Vividly evoking the post-war era, Bragg draws an indelible portrait of all that formed him: a community-spirited northern town, still steeped in the old ways; the Lake District landscapes that inspired him; and the many remarkable people in his close-knit world.

Melvyn Bragg

I feel like I know every nook and cranny, every little alleyway and footpath in Wigton yet I have never been to Cumbria let alone that town. The whole community took pride and pleasure in the author’s achievements and he gives us some insight into the challenge of “thinking” himself into the role of elite scholar. We see how the old boy network was very much a part of acceptance into Oxford. A greater part of the marks were given to the interview process rather than the exam results, thereby ensuring that intake was very much skewed in favour of public school pupils who would have had much broader life experience as the sons and daughters of wealthy parents. Melvyn Bragg, BBC broadcaster, author and parliamentarian, presents here a memoir of his youth. He was born on October 6, 1939, so, right at the very start of the Second World War. He writes of growing up in the town of Wigton, located in Cumbria, a region in northwestern England of which the beautiful Lake District is part. The book concludes on his having been awarded and having accepted a scholarship to Oxford. As a young boy growing up in rooms above his parents’ pub, we see that what he has achieved is praiseworthy. We look at the how and why of his achievement. We observe where he came from, his parents and family, and the townsfolk he rubbed shoulders with. How his upbringings shaped him and what motivated him are central questions. Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir -- an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which lyrically evokes a vanished world.

Melvyn Bragg’s first ever memoir – an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which vividly evokes a vanished world. At the start. I had trouble enjoying this book. I had to read at least half until it began to improve for me From then on, my appreciation grew and grew. As a youngster Bragg’s interests were those of many a young lad. The games he played and the sports he took part in meant little to me. Being a member of different teams, he and they of course aimed to win. I personally am not a competitive person. For me, doing a sport, physical exercise or any other activity is done simply for the fun of doing it, not for coming in first. I really knew nothing about him before reading this and am reminded of the saying that “you can take someone out of a place but not the place it of them”. Whilst a home life living above a pub would not seem ideal for an elite student, this story proves that with the right support, you can achieve so much. In this elegiac and heartfelt memoir, Melvyn Bragg recreates his youth in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton: a working-class boy who expected to leave school at fifteen yet who gained a scholarship to Oxford University; who happily roamed the streets and raided orchards with his gang of friends until a breakdown in adolescence drove him to find refuge in books.I loved hearing about the wonderful landscape around Wigton and the days of innocence. Although this takes place before my birth, it reminds me of my own working class childhood. Of course this tends to be idealised over time. Extreme poverty existed, people weren’t as well nourished physically as they are today. However, I feel we were better nourished mentally without the pressures that youngsters have today from social media and societal expectation.

This was a slow burn to start with, but became totally engrossed in the teenage years of Melvyn Bragg’s life. But you also studied hard . To what extent did getting into Oxford change your relationship with home? In this captivating memoir, Melvyn Bragg recalls growing up in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton, from his early childhood during the war to the moment he had to decide between staying on or spreading his wings.This is the tale of a boy who lived in a pub and expected to leave school at fifteen yet won a scholarship to Oxford. Derailed by a severe breakdown when he was thirteen, he developed a passion for reading and study -- though that didn't stop him playing in a skiffle band or falling in love. There were so many hours to fill in each day without computers, mobile phones or TV. Walking, cycling, singing, dances, swimming, rugby all played a part in developing MB’s character and still left many hours free for study. I loved the story about falling in love with Sarah and their sexual explorations, fear of pregnancy which is so familiar to people of that generation. I really would have liked to read a bit more about how and why he and Sarah moved apart.