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King´s Cross Kid: A Childhood between the Wars
Victor Gregg
€ 13.99
€ 10.71
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Description for King´s Cross Kid: A Childhood between the Wars
Paperback. The highly entertaining prequel to "Rifleman," set to become one of the classic accounts of a London working-class childhood and youth. Num Pages: 256 pages, 1 x 8 page black and white plate. BIC Classification: 1DBKESL; 3JJG; BM. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 131 x 200 x 17. Weight in Grams: 200.
Victor Gregg, born in 1919, has had a rich and fascinating life. King's Cross Kid follows his London childhood from the age of five, when life was so hard that the Salvation Army arranged for young Vic to be taken to the Shaftesbury Home for Destitute Children. Home again a year later, the scallywag years of late childhood began. Then, after the years of street gangs and run-ins with the law, Vic leaves school at fourteen and his real adventures start, and with them a working-class apprenticeship in survival. Ending with his enlistment in the army on the day of his eighteenth birthday, this prequel to the bestselling Rifleman will appeal to the many readers who were charmed by Victor Gregg's engaging, honest and warm voice.
Product Details
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC United Kingdom
Number of pages
256
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2014
Condition
New
Weight
199g
Number of Pages
264
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781408840511
SKU
V9781408840511
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-1
About Victor Gregg
Victor Gregg was born in London in 1919 and joined the army in 1937, serving first in the Rifle Brigade in Palestine and North Africa, notably at the Battle of Alamein, and then with the Parachute Regiment, at the Battle of Arnhem. As a prisoner of war he survived the bombing of Dresden to be repatriated in 1946. The story of his adult years, Rifleman, was published by Bloomsbury in 2011, and the prequel, King’s Cross Kid, in 2013. Both were co-written with Rick Stroud. Victor Gregg died in 2021, aged 102. Rick Stroud is a writer and film director. As well as working with Vic Gregg on Rifleman he is the author of The Book of the Moon and The Phantom Army of Alamein: How the Camouflage Unit and Operation Bertram Hoodwinked Rommel. He lives in London.
Reviews for King´s Cross Kid: A Childhood between the Wars
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
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
Vic’s honesty and warmth shine through this engaging story
Choice Magazine
Intensely moving
Juliet Gardner, Mail on Sunday
A gripping life-story: an incident-packed account of heartache, violence and cunning by a man whose will to survive and unbreakable optimism are a true inspiration
Independent on Rifleman
Completely fascinating ... It has an immediate power throughout that makes war fiction a pale shadow of the real thing
Conn Iggulden
Second World War memoirs are commonplace, but very few soldiers had Victor Gregg's breadth and depth of experience ... Rifleman is an outstanding book that deserves to become a classic
Lloyd Clark, author of Arnhem
As action-packed as any fiction, and yet this is no novel ... His is truly an astonishing story
James Holland, author of The Battle of Britain and Fortress Malta
Quite simply, it is one of the best first-hand accounts by a combat infantryman that I have read ... This gripping book immediately joins a select band of the best soldiers' stories told from the sharp end. It is a classic
Gary Sheffield, 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
David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain
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
Vic’s honesty and warmth shine through this engaging story
Choice Magazine
Intensely moving
Juliet Gardner, Mail on Sunday
A gripping life-story: an incident-packed account of heartache, violence and cunning by a man whose will to survive and unbreakable optimism are a true inspiration
Independent on Rifleman
Completely fascinating ... It has an immediate power throughout that makes war fiction a pale shadow of the real thing
Conn Iggulden
Second World War memoirs are commonplace, but very few soldiers had Victor Gregg's breadth and depth of experience ... Rifleman is an outstanding book that deserves to become a classic
Lloyd Clark, author of Arnhem
As action-packed as any fiction, and yet this is no novel ... His is truly an astonishing story
James Holland, author of The Battle of Britain and Fortress Malta
Quite simply, it is one of the best first-hand accounts by a combat infantryman that I have read ... This gripping book immediately joins a select band of the best soldiers' stories told from the sharp end. It is a classic
Gary Sheffield, 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