The Details

About the Book

Alec Graydon was born in 1919 and died in 2003. He led a life that does not, on the surface, seem very unusual – a poor childhood in south London; National Service as a private in the army; marriage and the birth of a son; a job in the 1950s and 60s as a Post Office telephone engineer, and then retirement. But several things transformed Alec Graydon’s life, for better and for worse. Early on, he acquired a love of playing jazz, which allowed him to cling to sanity during the horrors of action during the War. But just as he was embarking on a post-war musical career he went deaf, as a result of the effects of his wartime service. With a resilience which was with him for most of his life, he took up a new passion and began to build a scale model of Manhattan – in his living room. He also began reading voraciously and developing his own writing skills. Finally, in the last decade of his life, he discovered the pleasures that can come from owning and loving a dog. All of this is described with pin-sharp memory and a sense of humour that remind us that any life can include the bizarre, the tragic, or the absurd.

About the Author

Alec Graydon was born in 1919 and died in 2003. His life could be summarised in a few brief statements – childhood in Brixton and then in an orphanage, teens in a pawnshop, Second World War as a private in the army, post-war as a Post Office telephone engineer, now in retirement with wife and Yorkshire terrier. But this description hides some intriguing details: twenty years spent building a detailed model of mid-town Manhattan in his one-bedroom flat, a life-long passion for the jazz saxophone and clarinet, a wartime service that attracted bizarre incidents, the sudden onset of deafness, and of love for a dog.