{"title":"William Woodruff","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the insightful works of William Woodruff, chronicler of Lancashire's industrial past and poignant observer of social change. Discover his evocative storytelling and historical depth, perfect for history enthusiasts.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"beyond-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9780316725309","title":"Beyond Nab End","description":"The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with him having arrived in Poplar in the early 1930s. On spec, he turns up at a steel foundry and luckily gets a job, also finding digs with an old couple in Bow. It also covers his winning of a place at Oxford and his part in the war effort.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49510468616465,"sku":"GOR000524394","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49658299253009,"sku":"GOR002909533","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50111190827281,"sku":"CIN0316725307G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50302519345425,"sku":"CIN0316725307A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51389255975185,"sku":"GOR011663999","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0316725307.jpg?v=1751038842"},{"product_id":"road-to-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9781906011260","title":"The Road to Nab End","description":"From his birth in 1916 (in the carding room of a cotton mill) until he ran away to London, William Woodruff lived in the heart of Blackburn’s weaving community. But after Lancashire’s supremacy in cotton textiles had ended with the crash of 1920, his father was thrown out of work. From then on, including the great depression of the 1930s, Woodruff and his family faced a life blighted by extreme poverty. Reading this book today, it is hard to comprehend that within living memory - and in what was the richest country in the world - so many people couldn’t even afford to buy enough food. For the ordinary families of Lancashire, unemployment was an ever-present fear: \"If you worked you ate. If there was no work you went hungry.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49513897197841,"sku":"GOR004911983","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49538316435729,"sku":"GOR005627419","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49666423587089,"sku":"GOR010874048","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735942734097,"sku":"NGR9781906011260","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50300516139281,"sku":"CIN1906011265VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50302607655185,"sku":"CIN1906011265G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52460632736017,"sku":"GOR007819303","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1906011265.jpg?v=1751218358"},{"product_id":"billy-boy-book-william-woodruff-9781853310478","title":"Billy Boy","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49535598264593,"sku":"GOR003801532","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51728865460497,"sku":"GOR006030941","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1853310476.jpg?v=1750900114"},{"product_id":"nab-end-and-beyond-book-william-woodruff-9780316726658","title":"Nab End and Beyond","description":"William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn - a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup - and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. At 16, William leaves the poverty of Blackburn for London, where he finds no streets paved with gold, but filthy tenements and such squalor only a great city can conceal. He gets a job in an iron foundry and finds lodgings with a beer-swilling landlady and her family - a predatory daughter, and a tattooed madman of a son with whom he has to share his bed. Then, at night school, William discovers his love of learning, which eventually takes him to Plater college, Oxford. As Mosley's blackshirts provoke fighting on the streets, William witnesses the courage of ordinary people in the face of war: a war in which he himself will soon be fighting ...","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49536650608913,"sku":"GOR000613361","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49547815518481,"sku":"GOR002418926","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348095373585,"sku":"CIN0316726656G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0316726656.jpg?v=1750941395"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9780349118116","title":"Vessel Of Sadness","description":"Italy, 1944 - this is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. Here, (distilled from the experiences and observations of one who fought with them in the British infantry unit) is the mood of those who fought and died at Anzio. Their task -  to seize the Alban Hills and then Rome forty miles away. Instead, for more than four months, they sank into the mud of the Anzio plain and fought for their lives. Nothing has appeared since Erich Maria Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT that can compare with this book's ability to penetrate the minds of men at war. There are no heroes, no heroines, no victories. This is a faceless, nameless, fragmented war. Even national differences - Britain, Italian, German, American - merge and are forgotten in this larger story of humanity. This story, in fact, does not need to be Anzio; it could be any battlefield where man has faced death.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543140475153,"sku":"GOR000562574","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50132318224657,"sku":"NGR9780349118116","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50143962104081,"sku":"GOR000233546","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50173453598993,"sku":"CIN0349118116G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51324307702033,"sku":"CIN0349118116VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51326804164881,"sku":"CIN0349118116A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53026885959953,"sku":"GOR000195044","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349118116.jpg?v=1772705563"},{"product_id":"beyond-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9780349116228","title":"Beyond Nab End","description":"The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with him having arrived in Poplar in the early 1930s. On spec he turns up at a steel foundry and luckily gets a job. His digs are with an old couple in Bow where he has to share a single bed (head to toe) with their mentally retarded son. Life in the foundry is grim but William is indomitable. For recreation one day he cycles (then in the days before inflatable tyres) to Berkhamstead to try and track down an old girlfriend. She's not there and he has to return in a snowstorm - it takes him eight hours to get back to Poplar and then he has to get up three hours later to work at the foundry. Eventually he decides to 'get some leernin' and his first white collar job starts for the water board in ... Brettenham House! He continues to pursue his studies, finally winning a place at Ruskin College, Oxford. How the ex-steel worker became an Oxford academic - and William's concluding description of returning from the war to meet the son he's never seen - is deeply moving.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49546721591569,"sku":"GOR003103371","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49638091161873,"sku":"GOR003101095","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49726993498385,"sku":"NGR9780349116228","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349498630417,"sku":"CIN0349116229G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53349677498641,"sku":"CIN0349116229A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349116229.jpg?v=1750878058"},{"product_id":"shadows-of-glory-book-william-woodruff-9780316726566","title":"Shadows of Glory","description":"Woodruff's novel is about the fortunes of an Oxford University rowing eight, leading up to and during the Second World War. 1938: the Arnold College crew are a varied bunch, united only by the love of their sport and a sense that theirs is a generation which may have to fight for king and country. There's Charley Bradbury, a Scottish Communist and pacifist; David Evans, a chorister and super- boffin; Roger Blundell a witty dandy;Tony Markham, heir to a substantial estate and brother to four Mitford-type sisters; Pat Riley, charming somewhat mysterious Irishman; Alex Haverfield, handsome and a natural leader; Max Elsfield a dangerous self- destructive drinker and Bill Clark a naval cadet. As the war progresses they are gradually whittled away. Some, like Max Elsfield and David Evans, have been unhappy in love and have brought about their own destruction through reckless assaults on the enemy. Others like Charley Bradbury have had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - torpedoed on a passenger vessel from Russia. Ultimately this - like the Nab End stories - is a book about common humanity: the importance of virtues such as faith, loyalty and self- sacrifice.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49548602867985,"sku":"GOR001848431","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50149624938769,"sku":"GOR012298367","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50416936091921,"sku":"GOR001820889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0316726567.jpg?v=1751133650"},{"product_id":"concise-history-of-the-modern-world-book-william-woodruff-9780349118376","title":"A Concise History Of The Modern World","description":"This book investigates the major changes in world history and world economy during the past five hundred years and explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both past and present. Its underlying theme is the struggle for power in which, since the sixteenth century, the West has prevailed. Many of the problems of the contemporary world - including terrorism - are the legacy of the period of Western domination. Until the rise of the West, and its incomparable impact on every branch of human activity, the centre of the world has been in Asia. By the nineteenth century world power was firmly in the hands of the West. America's later rise to world status was prompted by the two world wars. The most prominent of the Western nations, the US is now blamed for all the excesses of an earlier colonial age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49550556791057,"sku":"GOR001080724","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49559063462161,"sku":"GOR002553134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349589233937,"sku":"CIN034911837XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52148225409297,"sku":"NLS9780349118376","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/034911837X.jpg?v=1751038434"},{"product_id":"road-to-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9780907871675","title":"The Road to Nab End","description":"From his birth in 1916 (in the carding room of a cotton mill) until he ran away to London, William Woodruff lived in the heart of Blackburn’s weaving community. But after Lancashire’s supremacy in cotton textiles had ended with the crash of 1920, his father was thrown out of work. From then on, including the great depression of the 1930s, Woodruff and his family faced a life blighted by extreme poverty. Reading this book today, it is hard to comprehend that within living memory - and in what was the richest country in the world - so many people couldn’t even afford to buy enough food. For the ordinary families of Lancashire, unemployment was an ever-present fear: \"If you worked you ate. If there was no work you went hungry.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49551365046545,"sku":"GOR000786816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49597354836241,"sku":"GOR002690087","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49650046894353,"sku":"GOR001905106","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0907871674.jpg?v=1751437303"},{"product_id":"concise-history-of-the-modern-world-book-william-woodruff-9780333687949","title":"A Concise History of the Modern World","description":"By investigating the major changes in world history during the past 500 years, this book explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both the past and the present. This book tells of the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, and recounts the growing communality and interdependence of nations. It shows how so many problems of the contemporary world are the legacy of an unprecedented era of western domination - the end of which was hastened by the two world wars. In explaining how the world has come to be what it is, the book examines the implications surrounding the end of the Cold War, the unravelling of communism in Eastern Europe, and the growing challenge of the non-western world to western superiority. It is the author's belief that we have reached a transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. With the shift of geopolitical and geoeconomic power to Asia, and with the growing worldwide influence of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary nationalism, the need for a global perspective has become acute.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49574124028177,"sku":"GOR003011178","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53557306523921,"sku":"GOR003092905","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0333687949.jpg?v=1751324362"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9781574880540","title":"Vessel of Sadness","description":"Italy 1944 is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. They were young when they left and sang as they sailed down the Clyde. They didn't know where they were going and they didn't really care. They didn't want to fight and they hardly knew what the war was about. But they went, together, singing, to what lay before them. Here, distilled from the experiences and observations of the author, who served in Italy in the British infantry, is the story of those who fought and died at Anzio.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49579358290193,"sku":"GOR005405799","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49896847376657,"sku":"CIN1574880543G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53235492749585,"sku":"CIN1574880543VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1574880543.jpg?v=1751276953"},{"product_id":"nab-end-and-beyond-book-william-woodruff-9780349119878","title":"Nab End And Beyond","description":"William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his  mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn - a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup - and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. At 16, William leaves the poverty of Blackburn for London, where he finds no streets paved with gold, but filthy tenements and such squalor only a great city can conceal. He gets a job in an iron foundry and finds lodgings with a beer-swilling landlady and her family - a predatory daughter, and a tattooed madman of a son with whom he has to share his bed. Then, at night school, William discovers his love of learning, which eventually takes him to Plater college, Oxford. As Mosley's blackshirts provoke fighting on the streets, William witnesses the courage of ordinary people in the face of war: a war in which he himself will soon be fighting . . .","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49593766281489,"sku":"GOR000939061","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49646372028689,"sku":"GOR000466097","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49961854370065,"sku":"CIN0349119872A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50108240986385,"sku":"CIN0349119872G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349119872.jpg?v=1751227994"},{"product_id":"shadows-of-glory-book-william-woodruff-9780349116891","title":"Shadows Of Glory","description":"Woodruff's novel is about the fortunes of an Oxford University rowing eight, leading up to and during the Second World War. 1938: the Arnold College crew are a varied bunch, united only by the love of their sport and a sense that theirs is a generation which may have to fight for king and country. There's Charley Bradbury, a Scottish Communist and pacifist; David Evans, a chorister and super-boffin; Roger Blundell a witty dandy;Tony Markham, heir to a substantial estate and brother to four Mitford-type sisters; Pat Riley, charming somewhat mysterious Irishman; Alex Haverfield, handsome and a natural leader; Max Elsfield a dangerous self-destructive drinker and Bill Clark a naval cadet. As the war progresses they are gradually whittled away.  Some, like Max Elsfield and David Evans, have been unhappy in love and have brought about their own destruction through reckless assaults on the enemy. Others like Charley Bradbury have had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - torpedoed on a passenger vessel from Russia. Ultimately this - like the Nab End stories - is a book about common humanity: the importance of virtues such as faith, loyalty and self-sacrifice.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49609969008913,"sku":"GOR003637212","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50216558231825,"sku":"CIN034911689XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349523927313,"sku":"CIN034911689XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50408925135121,"sku":"GOR003595399","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52471276994833,"sku":"GOR008028679","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53408188039441,"sku":"GOR008549411","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/034911689X.jpg?v=1751101943"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9780460023993","title":"Vessel of Sadness","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49624005443857,"sku":"GOR001072189","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50197167833361,"sku":"GOR003390141","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0460023993.jpg?v=1750942855"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9780701116828","title":"Vessel of Sadness","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49626719486225,"sku":"GOR013052885","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49644708167953,"sku":"GOR003137421","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49871769895185,"sku":"GOR002782248","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/070111682X.jpg?v=1751105788"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9780060157098","title":"Vessel of Sadness","description":"Italy 1944 is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. They were young when they left and sang as they sailed down the Clyde. They didn't know where they were going and they didn't really care. They didn't want to fight and they hardly knew what the war was about. But they went, together, singing, to what lay before them. Here, distilled from the experiences and observations of the author, who served in Italy in the British infantry, is the story of those who fought and died at Anzio.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49654470639889,"sku":"GOR013580296","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50451889553681,"sku":"CIN0060157097A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53121388871953,"sku":"GOR008610081","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060157097.jpg?v=1751068730"},{"product_id":"road-to-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9780349115214","title":"The Road to Nab End","description":"William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his  mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn -- a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup -- and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. Woodruff had to find his childhood fun in the little free time he had available between his delivery job  and school, but he never writes self-pityingly, leaving the reader to shed the tears on his behalf. At ten his mother takes him on his one and only holiday -- to Blackpool. He never wonders where they get the money to do so, only where she disappears to with strange men in the afternoons, before taking him to the funfair, pockets jingling an hour or two later. NAB END is certainly not all grime and gloom however, there's a cast of great minor characters from an unfrocked vicar to William's indomitable grandmother Bridget who lend some colour and humour -- and all against the strongly rendered social backdrop of the 1920s and 1930s.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49660914762001,"sku":"GOR003107548","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49856411271441,"sku":"CIN0349115214A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50936252662033,"sku":"GOR011525525","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52764330688785,"sku":"CIN0349115214G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52960981123345,"sku":"CIN0349115214VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349115214_85a60493-15d0-466d-9681-81638b2a6243.jpg?v=1750909479"},{"product_id":"road-to-nab-end-book-william-woodruff-9781561310692","title":"The Road to Nab End","description":"A bestseller in England and celebrated as one of the great memoirs in many years, The Road to Nab End is a marvelously evocative account of growing up poor in a British mill town.  From William Woodruff's birth in 1916 (in the carding room of a cotton mill) until he ran away to London at the age of sixteen, he lived in the heart of Blackburn's weaving community in the north of England.  But after Lancashire's supremacy in cotton textiles ended with the crash of 1920, his father was thrown out of work.  From then on, Billy and his family faced a life blighted by extreme poverty.  For the ordinary families of Lancashire, unemployment was an ever-present fear: \"If you worked you ate.  If there was no work you went hungry.\"  Billy's boyhood was not all misery.  Working-class pride and culture made for tight family and neighborhood bonds and added savor to the smallest pleasures in life.  Mr. Woodruff writes with an understated lyricism and an eye for telling details that effortlessly pulls us into another time and place.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49995722621201,"sku":"CIN1561310697VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1561310697.jpg?v=1751245043"},{"product_id":"vessel-of-sadness-book-william-woodruff-9780809308750","title":"Vessel of Sadness","description":"Italy 1944 is the setting of one of the most convincing and quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been written. They were young when they left and sang as they sailed down the Clyde. They didn't know where they were going and they didn't really care. They didn't want to fight and they hardly knew what the war was about. But they went, together, singing, to what lay before them. Here, distilled from the experiences and observations of the author, who served in Italy in the British infantry, is the story of those who fought and died at Anzio.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51822047461649,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51822047953169,"sku":"NGR9780809308750","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780809308750.jpg?v=1752619304"},{"product_id":"america-s-impact-on-the-world-book-william-woodruff-9781349020676","title":"America's Impact on the World","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52337720787217,"sku":"NLS9781349020676","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781349020676.jpg?v=1758167546"},{"product_id":"concise-history-of-the-modern-world-book-william-woodruff-9781349122349","title":"A Concise History of the Modern World","description":"This book investigates the major changes in world history and world economy during the past five hundred years and explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both past and present. Its underlying theme is the struggle for power in which, since the sixteenth century, the West has prevailed. Many of the problems of the contemporary world - including terrorism - are the legacy of the period of Western domination. Until the rise of the West, and its incomparable impact on every branch of human activity, the centre of the world has been in Asia. By the nineteenth century world power was firmly in the hands of the West. America's later rise to world status was prompted by the two world wars. The most prominent of the Western nations, the US is now blamed for all the excesses of an earlier colonial age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52589967737105,"sku":"NLS9781349122349","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781349122349.jpg?v=1761061138"},{"product_id":"america-s-impact-on-the-world-book-william-woodruff-9780333154045","title":"America's Impact on the World","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52591975432465,"sku":"NLS9780333154045","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780333154045.jpg?v=1761064993"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-william-woodruff.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}