Thirty Years In A Turtleneck Sweater

Nick was just like any other boy growing up in the early 70s: he liked playing out on bikes and being a little sod. He liked Cowboys & Indians and Sooty & Sweep. He had loads of ace brothers and sisters and loved his mum, even though she wasn't his real mum. His dad was great too. He was something called an 'activist' and he was always away at 'meetings' and 'strikes' which were all really boring. Then one day his dad was taken away and he didn't come back. Nick's dad was Des Warren, a passionate union man who, along with Ricky Tomlinson, became one of the legendary Shrewsbury Two, heroes of the great unions clashes with the Government that defined the era. Made an example of, he went to prison simply for standing up for what he believed in and refusing to give in - an act that eventually cost him his health and his life as he had known it. Nick's world was turned upside down: new homes, new schools, looked after by strangers, seeing his mother slowly worn away by it all. While he continued with all the regular trials of growing up, life became an endless succession of campaigns, protest marches and prison visits - an experience from which the family never truly recovered.
Told obliquely with all the unaffected charm and misunderstanding you might expect from a young narrator, Thirty Years in a Turtleneck Sweater is the story of growing up in the long shadow of a charismatic yet uncompromising figure. Both hilarious and moving, it is about a father who, in his own way, loved his son; and a boy who idolised his father, but could never get close enough (without being thrown in the sea).