Jon N. Davies

Welcome to 1989, A Year as a Book. Whilst some of this year has featured in 'Resurrection and Return', the focus on solely one year allows for the inclusion of letters in detail, of fuller diary entries from Mum, seeing her and Dad's life in more detail, and of a larger selection of photographs than...

1992 was the first, and last, time since 1987 that I spent a whole year living at home. I would return to Egham/Staines briefly twice, and go on a publishing course at Exeter, as well as the regular visits to relatives in Biddulph and Croydon, but as far as where I lived was concerned, it was Peterb...

The author undertakes his own Odyssey, unlike Odysseus starting from his home town, then progressing through the mystical towns of Aberystwyth and Caernarfon, before ascending the heights of Snowdon, then on to Bangor, Shrewsbury and Knighton. Along the way he visits family, tours castles and cathed...

Coventry and the Cotswolds coach tour in October 2021 was not just the last holiday I would go with Dad on, but the last holiday he would go on before he passed away a few months later. Thus, I have wanted to do two things with this book. One is, of course, to describe the holiday in detail, using m...

This collection of articles, logbooks, diaries, letters and photographs chronicles 4 holidays within my family to Brittany. They start with the motorhome holiday of Summer 1987 and all four of us, when the intention to holiday purely within Brittany was dashed by the weather and we spent the first p...

New Horizons focuses on change. My sister and her husband moved from Southend to a new house in Waundeg, South Wales and soon began a family I started working at HSBC and then moved into a new house in Hockley. Mum and Dad moved from Leintwardine to Knighton. This memoir picks up after the event...

As a family we had two motorhome holidays in Scotland - in the Summer of 1981 when we went up to the lochs, and the Mull of Kintyre, and in the Summer of 1988 when we visited around Dumfries and Galloway. My diary of our 1978 Northumberland holiday also shows that we popped across the border on one ...

The holiday that this book records was aimed at filling in the gaps. Some of it was to go where maybe I once went, perhaps in 1981, perhaps in 1988, but most of it was to go where I had never been, but always heard of and often wanted to go. Thus I began in Dumfries, moved to Campbeltown then up to ...

I always felt that Dad played "Who Painted The Moon Black" in memory of, and mourning for, Mum. After he died, it became to me the song that remembered them both, and their love for each other. After Mum died, I published Dad's collection of poems "A Fountain Stirred" which he compiled in memory of...

As the world spins out of control, this memoir records my holidays tying things up. From visiting Pembroke Castle, which I had always intended to do, to touring HMS Belfast for the first time in 25 years, or visiting the Tower of London for the first time since 1981, The End of Times records my atte...

The Fall of Empires is the seventh book in the Magnum Opus series, and chronicles the latter half of the 1990s, up to the death and funeral of Grandad in January 2000. To avoid duplicating content, what is largely Dad’s book ‘From Peterborough to Leintwardine’ which I constructed from his notes, log...

The Middle Years fills in the gap between "The First Year", looking at my first year at secondary school, and 1985, the first of the year-only books. It thus covers Autumn 1982 to Christmas 1984. A lot of the material can be found in 'Childhood of Dreams', the narrative of our holidays in the motorh...

1985 has been pieced together from Dad's logbook for the holidays in the Buccaneer, from letters from school pertaining to the Switzerland holiday, and my fieldwork folder for that holiday, from labelled photographs in my albums, and from my diary journal which I began in December 1985, and which th...

1986 was an important year in my life. It was the year I turned 16 in the July. It was the year I finished school, doing my 'O' Levels in the Spring and Summer. And the year I went into the Sixth Form in the September, deciding at the last moment to study Economics for A Level, instead of Geography....

1987 pieces together the year from surviving sources - 3 volumes of my diary journal, dad's logbook, some poems, lots of photographs etc. The aim is to cover the year as fully as possible, filling in any evidential gaps with memories. It was the year I was finishing in the Lower Sixth, and after the...

1988 was a momentous year in my life. I completed my time in the Upper Sixth, gaining good enough grades to get into my first choice university. The long Summer was June to October was spent largely working in manual labouring jobs through an agency. I had my 18th birthday, began writing a fantasy n...

And Not In A Van chronicles holidays from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s that were not taken in a motorhome, whether hired or owned. We start in Spain in 1975, 1976 and 1977 at my paternal grandparents' villa above Fuengirola, and we end in 1987 and 1989 at timeshare holidays in Spain, between Fuen...

Away From Home is the fifth book in the Magnum Opus series, and chronicles my time away from Peterborough, whilst it remained the family home. As such, the first instance is the few weeks around Easter 1992 when I returned to New Halls, Royal Holloway College, to work in hospitality etc for the fina...

Taking a brief look at our first home in Peterborough, located in Bretton, the book then moves on to 2 Juniper in Longthorpe, looking to set the house in its immediate locale. From there, we circle out, first to Longthorpe village and Thorpe Wood, then to Ferry Meadows country park and the Nene Vall...

From Kittens to Empire chronicles 1979 to the Summer of 1981, covering the latter two terms of 2nd Year Juniors and all of 3rd Year Juniors, 4th Year Juniors, and the Summer holidays that followed. It is the period I remember most strongly, and where we went from having two kittens to having one cat...

This volume covers my life up to the age of eight and a half. Specifically it focuses on my earliest memories as a rising 3 year old in Leeds, sees the birth of my sister, our move to Stalbridge in Dorset, then to Middleton, Bretton in Peterborough, and in September 1976 to our newly-built house at ...

On the one hand, this book chronicles my first year of secondary school, from September 1981 to July 1982. On the other hand, this book looks at the death of my Nan (Mum's mother) and of my Grandpa (Dad's father) and how those changed things, and impacted upon our lives. Primary sources used include...

The Last Days... The world feels like it is hanging on by a slender thread that a few brave souls are fighting to preserve, whilst the Sword of Damocles sways above us, ready to descend. Whilst I both support and back those fighting this good fight, it increasingly feels like a doomed enterprise. Fi...

My late Dad came to me in a dream in the early Autumn of 2024 and told me I had to do a book about the Welsh side of our family, and of our visits to them over the years. This book is that book. Any deficiencies are mine alone. The book is in 4 sections:- 1) Ancestry 2) Family - the distinction bein...

14 Victoria Row was my Nan and Grandad's house, where they lived whilst he was coal miner in the pit opposite, where had and raised 3 children, where my Nan sadly died, and where my Grandad lived on for another two decades. It was also where as a family we had many happy times in the 1970s, with Nan...

In April 1983 we crossed the Channel in our Bedford Buccaneer motorhome to drive from Normandy to Paris, and back. This holiday was recorded by way of alternating reports as homework my Mum and Dad set me and my sister. A year later, with my secondary school I was back in Paris, and whilst this coa...

2 Juniper was built in 1976 as part of the expansion of a new estate. A detached house, it sat in a good plot of land, with garden almost on 4 sides of it. Over the years, this allowed for substantial extension - a utility room in 1978, a porch extension onto the front hallway and a bedroom extensio...

Inside the house, other changes included additional sliding doors, and new carpeting, whilst in the garden the pond was enlarged and the area remodelled after one of the trees died. In 1994, the original buyers of the property sold up upon retirement and moved, one of the last of the families who ha...

In 1978 and 1979 we hired a motorhome and visited Northumberland the first year and Cornwall the second. The success of these holidays encouraged my parents to buy a motorhome for early 1980, a Bedford Buccaneer with a lift-up roof. Our first outings were days out, which I recorded in a homework dia...

Resurrection and Return is the fourth book in the Magnum Opus series, and chronicles my life from the Summer of 1988 onwards, after the completion of A Levels, where unlike the previous two years we did not immediately embark on a foreign holiday at the end of the school year, but stayed at home in ...

In 1717 William Gough of Willsbury, Saint Briavels, Gloucestershire married Catherine Portrey, daughter of Christopher Portrey of Ynyscedwyn, Ystradgynlais, Breconshire. In December 1752 the last of the male Portreys, Christopher junior, died. William and Catherine's son, Richard, inherited Ynyscedw...

In 1683 the male line of the Aubreys of Ynyscedwyn came to an end with the death of the last Morgan Aubrey. The estate then passed into the family of the Portreys, where Richard Portrey of Cheriton, Vicar of Rhossili and Ystradgynlais, had married Catherine Aubrey. His son, Christopher Portrey inher...

In the early 1960s my paternal grandparents, Gwilym and Doris Davies, bought a plot of land in the mountains above Fuengirola, on the Costa del Sol. Here, they transformed a barren wilderness into the grounds of a villa Mar-y-Sierra, and its attendant bungalow La Vista, complete with luxurious garde...