A true story of Michael, an 10 year old Cornish boy who in 1967 watched the Torrey Canyon oil tanker being bombed. The tanker was snagged on rocks, on the seven stones reef. Michaels accounts of the devastation that followed on Cornish beaches, is harrowing. Also, his love of Trereife where he lived and Christmas trips to Mousehole to see the Christmas lights, and Myths and legends, and learning to cook pasties with his mother. Furthermore, what he experienced growing up between 1966 - 1967, a Proper Cornish Childhood is a fascinating voyage of discovery of life in 1960s Cornwall.

"The story of an extraordinary boy and his rise from a working-class background to become one of the world's greatest Elizabethan scholars"--Dust jacket.

______________ 'Emma Smith has written a book that should - and I hope does - endure as a classic among memoirs of childhood. I savoured every page' - Miranda Seymour, Evening Standard 'A wonderful book, full of unexpected effects, and I suspect that it will become a classic of the genre ... so sincerely compassionate that I honestly can't read it without weeping' - Lynne Truss, Sunday Times 'Evocative, witty and profoundly moving' - Daily Telegraph 'Deserves to become an overnight classic and to find a home at holiday cottage bedsides from St. Ives to Great Yarmouth' - Patrick Gale, author of Notes on an Exhibition ______________ The Great Western Beach is Emma Smith's wonderfully atmospheric memoir of a 1920s childhood in Newquay, Cornwall. She recalls the rocks, the sea, the beaches, the picnics, the teas and pasties, the bracing walks, the tennis tournaments and bathing parties, the curious residents and fascinating holiday-makers - relishing every glorious, salty detail. But above all this is a portrait of a family from the astonishingly clear-eyed perspective of a nine-year-old girl: her furious, frustrated father, perpetually on his way to becoming a world famous artist but suffering the indignity of being a lowly bank clerk; her beautiful, unperceptive mother, made for better things perhaps but at least, with three fiancés killed in the Great War, married with children at last; the twins, fearless, defiant Pam and sickly, bewildered Jim, for whom life is always an uphill climb, and baby Harvey, brought on the same winds of change that mean that life, with all its complication and wonder, cannot stay still and the Cornish playground of Emma's childhood will one day be lost forever.

Cornwall, the land of sandy beaches, pretty fishing coves, historic fishing ports, tin mining, mansions and gardens, quaint thatched cottages, atmospheric moors, art galleries, writers and picturesque towns? All of that is true but there is so much more to Cornwall and its influence on the rest of Britain and many parts of the world is often forgotten or unknown but yet continues. The county has seen political intrigue; religious upheavals; financial scandals. It has produced political radicals, slaves and slave owners; artists, writers and musicians; renowned engineers, mineralogists and scientists and was the first to introduce compulsory education. Cornwall was the birthplace of the discoverers of chemical elements, the planet Neptune and solar power and has been hugely significant in radio, electrical telegraphy and television. Cornish people have been influential across the centuries, the world and an incredible number of disciplines.