I have always enjoyed reading and have accumulated books since I was a small boy. I cannot really remember the days before I learned to read. Presumably I could not read before I went to nursery school in 1944 and I well remember listening to our teacher reading to us as we sat on the floor in a semi-circle near to a roaring open fire in our school room in the winter of 1945. Later as a five or six year old, in another classroom with a roaring open fire, I sat with about fifty other children looking at a large blackboard and easel in one corner facing the class, on which was written the alphabet — in coloured chalk — with a little drawing and an explanation for every letter of the alphabet. A is for Apple; B is for Bat; C is for Cat; D is for Dog; etc — and so on to Z. Then we had simple reading books — usually shared one book between two of us. Those were years of post-war rationing and everything was in short supply.
My earliest fully remembered reading experience was in September of 1949. My father took me across to the Isle of Man to see motorbike racing, the Manx Grand Prix. That was the year when an up and coming rider named Geoff Duke came 2nd in the Junior TT but then went on to win the Senior on a 500cc Manx Norton. It was a terrific holiday for a small boy and I remember so much that we saw on our days out away from the racing. On the last day of the week, Friday, the weather was typically Isle of Man autumn style, with mist drifting in off the sea and drizzle falling steadily throughout the day. It was not weather for wandering around much but it wasn't especially cold. In Douglas, the capital, that morning we wandered along under the cover of the Villa Marina wondering what to do. We had cups of coffee and then dad took me into a bookshop and bought a book for me. In those days paperback books were not the universal, ubiquitous publications that they were to become from the mid-1950s onwards and mine was a hardback edition of "The Emperor's Bracelet" written by Manning Coles. Manning Coles was — I am informed by Wikipedia — two people, Adelaide Francis Oke Manning [1891 — 1959] and Cyril Henry Coles [1899 — 1965]. The two writers were neighbours in Meon in Hampshire and both had worked for British intelligence during WWII. How they decided who wrote what, I have no idea but they were reasonably successful. publishing a string on mystery type novels between about 1940 and 1960. "The Emperor's Bracelet" is described as a Junior Novel and was published in 1947. I think my book cost about 3/6d in 1949. Copies of the book are still available from second-hand shops, costing between about £10 and £50. On that day in 1949, we spent most of the day under the Villa Marina — I reading my book and dad reading a newspaper, probably the Daily Express. Breaking for a lunch of fish and chips, I read until about 4.30 pm when we returned to the boarding-house of Mrs Kaneen for our evening meal and chat with he other boarders. I finished the book, either on the Friday evening or on the following day as we sailed back to Liverpool on the Ben-My-Chree, a ferry boat of about 2,600 tons, built in 1927 — and present at Dunkirk in 1940.
I still have that book, bought for me 66 years ago, perhaps the foundation of my book collection.
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