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This remarkable, in-depth oral history of the 20th century in Portsmouth, which has been compiled by Portsmouth Museums and Records Service, together with leading oral historians on the city, offers a fascinating insight into the experience of life during the recent past. The many voices that have been recorded provide an intimate, authentic portrait of Portsmouth and its people. Chapters focus on the key stages in personal life stories, on childhood, courtship, sex and marriage, family life, old age and death. Earning a living plays a principal role in the story. There are first-hand accounts of working conditions and of the various skills and occupations - from knife-grinding, corset-making, aircraft manufacture, bus-driving and market gardening to policework, shopwork and, of course, work in Portsmouth's dockyard which has contributed so much to the city's history and to its collective memory. Reminiscences of World War Two are especially poignant, but the local impact of other conflicts is remembered as well - the Gulf, the Falklands, Korea, The Great War. The book also looks back to the entertainments and leisure pursuits of their day, including the seaside, cinemas, cafes, sports, music, dancing, the pub and the coming of television. Edited by John Steadman.

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Memories of Portsmouth is a collection of photographs form a time not- so-long-ago. It is not a history book, rather a nostalgic look at life concentrating on that most eventful period in our recent past centred around the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Each picture is brought to life with generous, well researched captions that will rekindle thoughts of how things were in the Portsmouth of our childhood, the Portsmouth of our parents, and perhaps even our grandparents.

Inside this book you will find images of everyday life, including people at work, at play, on the move and in the city centre. Every facet of Portsmouth nostalgia finds a place.

Above all these images are intended to bring back memories of how things were in a time that seems like only yesterday...

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For a long time Portsmouth has been known as a Dockyard town, and indeed until the 1980s, when the last great contraction of the yard took place, this was certainly the case. Portsmouth's original function was not so much that of a dockyard, since these did not exist, so much as a landing place for the convenience of dignitaries travelling between France and England, following the Norman conquest. Portsmouth's fortunes were closely linked to war and peace rather than to the market considerations, which governed most towns growth.

by Ray Riley