Beyond Nab End

The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with his arrival in the EastEnd of London in the early 1930s. He finds lodgings with a Cockney family inStratford, where he shares a single bed (head to toe) with a stonebreaker.He thinks himself lucky to get a job at an iron foundry until he faces thegruelling, back-breaking work. But William is indomitable. To find his oldsweetheart, he one day cycles to Berkhamstead. She's not there and hereturns in a snowstorm - it takes him eight hours to reach friends in thewest of London and then, after three hours sleep, another four to get towork on time.Eventually he joins a night school to 'get some learnin'; his first whitecollar job starts for the water board in S( Brettenham House! His studiesfinally take him to the Catholic Workers College (which is now PlaterCollege), Oxford.How the foundry worker became a scholar, how war interrupted his studies -and William's concluding description of returning from war to meet the sonhe's never seen - is a deeply moving story.