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Catching up with the Past is a fascinating account of Michael Windross' life. From his early childhood in Cumberland, it moves to London - where, as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, he also sang at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey; then to Lancing College, to Cambridge, and crossing the North Sea, to Antwerp. Events follow in a linear progression - but with echoes from a distant past.
In part two, the reader is transported back to Dumfriesshire in the nineteenth century and taken on a journey that retraces the family past, not only through written records but also through objects which tell their own tale. The narrative follows the now familiar path, but then shifts to Australia, Gallipoli, and, in World War II, to the Anzio beachhead - as described by the author's father Brian in letters written to Doris, his wife. The story comes full circle.
This is a life well lived. The book will appeal to those who share the writer's love of the past, who have a strong sense of time and place - and are game for a bit of detective work!
ISBN : 978-1-80074-285-7
Published: 30/11/2023
Pages : 266
Size : 234x156
Imprint : Olympia Publishers
Michael Windross was born in Carlisle in 1942. He was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral from 1952 to 1956, and then moved on to Lancing College and St John's College Cambridge, where he read history as well as being a choral scholar. He emigrated to Belgium in 1964 and taught for forty years at the Higher Institute for Translators and Interpreters in Antwerp. He was awarded his PhD by Louvain University in 1988. He has published in the fields of historical linguistics and the history of ideas. Catching up with the Past is his first venture into non-academic writing. He and Elly, his wife, divide their time between Antwerp, Sussex, and Abruzzo in Italy.