Pauline Barclay : Celebrating West Yorkshire Published

This week I am celebrating West Yorkshire with authors from the area and also their books that have a Yorkshire theme.

I was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire and went to school there, Gregory Girls and Bolling Girls (these school have long since gone!). At the age of fourteen, due to my father's work, we moved to Suffolk. Since then I have lived in a number of places in the UK as well as the Netherlands. Today, I live, with my wonderful husband and our rescue doggy, on one of the beautiful islands in the Canary Isles, but my roots still extend back to Yorkshire.

My lovely Nana, born in 1889 and lived until she was ninety one, worked in a Mill off Barkerend Road, Bradford. The memories of Nana working in the mill were used in my novel, Storm Clouds Gathering.

Storm Clouds Gathering is set in a Yorkshire mill town in 1965 and reflects how life was for working class people back in the sixties. The sound of the clip clop of the rag and bones man’s horse has it trotted down streets, the unforgettable odour of the woollen mills, the deafening noise and the toil of working in these places. Contrasted against the joy of owning a twin tub washing machine and the dream of central heating. How education in schools was changing and how women were slowly gaining control of their lives.

Love, lies and deceit go back decades and beyond and there is no change today, but when Storm Clouds Gather, time is not important only how to cope and survive in a world that is changing.

Please join me over the next week to meet three amazing authors and their books which are all steeped in Yorkshire.

Phill Featherstone

Paradise Girl