Reviving Echoes

This story follows the lives of Albert and Gillian through war, peace and retirement, from 1939 to 2013.


Albert is a chatty Birmingham bus conductor when he is called up to military service in 1939. Seven years later, aboard a troop ship returning home, Albert takes time to reflect upon his survival. Post-war life with wife Gillian, though difficult due to lack of resources, is happy.


As the decades pass, we see Albert and Gillian struggle to understand the new age while enjoying the peace they had yearned for in the war time years. National events, such as the threat of nuclear war, casts a shadow over that hard won peace. As Albert reaches retirement, world events once more bring new threats and a personal crisis to surpass all others, and one which must be overcome at the close of their story.


Reviving Echoes is James Skelding’s first novel and is influenced by writers as diverse as Jane Austen and Max Hastings. It offers readers a saga played out across periods of national and world importance.