Back to the Tamar

Following the success of his contemporary stories in Looking Towards the Tamar, in this new anthology Ted Sherrell looks back to the early post-war years. He captures the period of the 1950s brilliantly, with inspired stories of country folk, some of whom he has loosely based on characters he remembers from his childhood.


There is still considerable austerity, with wartime rationing only just being phased out, and people’s lives still affected by the previous decade’s hostilities. Yet, as the new decade progresses, there awakens a sense of exciting beginnings and a chance for modernisation and a better life. It is from this background that these country tales evolve, with the old farmer on the brink of embracing the combustion engine, a taxi driver talking to his car as if it were his old horse and rarely moving faster than the animal would, and the firemen who need to update their drill from that of dealing with the Blitz. 


Always drawing his inspiration from real life, Ted Sherrell combines a mixture of humour, idiosyncrasy and occasional tragedy within these tales, once again reflecting his great knowledge of the Tamar area and the humanity of the many characters that have evolved from it.