Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

A Bouquet of Memories is a heart warming account of Mary Goodhind's life from her early years in pre-war London-including her vivid recollections of her wartime experiences of being an evacuee-to her family's move to a new house in Barnehurst to escape the Blitz. She recounts the wartime privations, including rationing, with good humour, but her strong Catholic faith and close family ties to her parents and brother, Rory, were great sources or strength during the war years and beyond. German air-raids, both from conventional bombs, and later on with the V-1 and V-2 rockets, required a spirit of fortitude and endurance, and it seems that for the most part, people shrugged their shoulders and got on with life as well as they could. Her experiences of childhood, school, and her local church, reveal a world which has largely disappeared, a time before television, when there was a much greater sense of community. Similarly, her years at Convent school and her first job in a bank after the War provide fascinating insights into a very different way of life. A Bouquet of Memories also recounts Mary's love of horses and the friendships she established both during and after the War, as well as her numerous holidays and pilgrimages. This book will help the children of today to realise some of the things that their own relatives went through in the turbulent first half of the twentieth century. And while it will be a trip down memory lane for those who have lived through similar experiences, it will be an eye opener for those to whom World War II and its aftermath are mainly part of a fading historical remembrance.

Almost a century and a half went into the making of My Eighty Years in Texas. It began as a diary, kept by fifteen-year-old William Physick Zuber after he joined Sam Houston’s Texas army in 1836, hoping he could emulate the heroism of American Revolutionary patriots. Although his hopes were never realized, Zuber recorded the privations, victories, and defeats of armies on the move during the Texas Revolution, the Indian campaigns, and, as he styled it, the Confederate War. In 1910, at the age of ninety, Zuber began the enormous task of transcribing his diaries and his memories for publication. After his death in 1913, the handwritten manuscript, Eighty Years in Texas: Reminiscences of a Texas Veteran from 1830 to 1910, was placed in the Texas State Archives, where it was used as a reference source by students and scholars of Texas history. Over a half century after Zuber’s death, Janis Boyle Mayfield finally brought his publication plans to fruition. Zuber details his early zest for learning and his laborious methods of self-education. He tells of the trials of organizing and teaching schools in the sparsely populated plains. He recalls the day-by-day happenings of a private soldier in the Texas army of 1836, the Texas Militia, and the Confederate army—including the mishaps of army life and the encounters with enemies from San Jacinto to Cape Girardeau. After the Civil War, his interest turns to the politics of Reconstruction, the veterans’ pension, and the founding of the Texas Veterans Association. This is the story of and by an outspoken Texian, complete with his attitudes, principles, and moralizings, and the nineteenth-century style and flavor of his writing. Included as an appendix is “An Escape from the Alamo,” the account of Moses Rose for which Zuber, who was a prolific writer, was best known. A historiography of the Rose story, a bibliography of Zuber’s published and unpublished writings, annotation, and an introduction are provided by Llerena Friend.