Newcastle the missing years is great!

While I was in Newcastle this Saturday, Greg Howley  gave me a rather magnificent present, Greg and Sylvia Ray's Newcastle The Missing Years.

This book is great! You don't need to be from Newcastle to enjoy the photos of the 1930s and 1940s. I see from a review of the launch and the comments that the book has been a huge success.

Beyond my own interest in Newcastle, I was struck by a couple of things. This is a very urban, industrial book. It shows Newcastle as it was, a substantial city. I suspect Sydneysiders in particular will get a surprise. Generally, they are not used to thinking of another rival urban centre.

A few years back, I took my then quite young daughters to Newcastle just to show them the city. While there, I tried to buy a book on Newcastle to add to my New England history collection. I searched and searched, but the only book I could find was William Claridge's  ‘The Pommy Town Years: Memories of Mayfield and Other Tales of the Twenties’. I value the book, but I was disappointed.