The Fall of Empires

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, logs, and journal, plus Mum’s diary, has been adopted into the Magnum Opus series. It thus sits between ‘Away From Home’ which touches on my move to Ilford in early 1995, and this book which takes up the story with the start of 1996. Mum’s diary for 1996 is, strangely, missing – especially strange as it would be the one chronicling Mum and Dad’s holiday to Canada, visiting all the relatives out there. I was not keeping a regular journal in this period, but occasionally wrote a few days up in whatever exercise book I was using for something else. Several snippets of these survive including my visit to Biddulph in early 1996, dog-sitting for my uncle in Summer 1996, and my Summer holiday at Leintwardine Manor in 1997. Mum’s diaries for 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 provide a narrative framework, and some salient events have relatively large photo shoots – my holiday in Spain at Easter 1996, and Beth’s wedding to Robin in late 1996.