Haverhill writer, 92, publishes his memoir of life growing up in London's East End

A great-grandfather who four years ago was told he only had months to live used the devastating news to spur him on to finish a memoir - more than two decades after he started it.

Called 'Hoi! Wotcher doin' 'ere? Wapping Memories 1931-1945', the 506-page book by John Insole tells the story of his childhood in Wapping, East London.

Sprinkled with first-hand accounts of not just everyday life in the Wapping docklands and the East End but also historic events including the Mosley Marches by the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, war-time evacuation and The Blitz.

John, now aged 92 and living in Boxford Court, Haverhill, the town he has called home since 1969, said of the book: “ I’ve had a good response from people who read it.

“It is sprinkled with humour but it is a serious work. It has been described as a serious work.It’s fairly comprehensive. It really is a social document.

“It is a memoir but it it’s laced with detail. I wanted to make it personal because it is a personal experience.It’s all my own experience as I saw it.”

Part of the book tells of the time that John, who served for a number of years as a councillor on the Haverhill Urban District Council and then St Edmundsbury Borough Council, was evacuated to Tunstead in Norfolk, in 1939, when he was eight.

Describing that as a ‘bad experience’, John added: “That evacuation out of Wapping is part of its history and it’s never been told.

“They all have their own experiences and some of them never came back. Their homes and their families were destroyed.”

When John, who has three children, nine grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, was 88, he was given news by a consultant that hastened his completion of the book.

He was told he had terminal pancreatic cancer.

“He said there was nothing we can do and that’s it,” recalls John. “They said we can’t do chemotherapy, we can’t do anything. All we have got left is hormone treatment.

“We might be able to reduce the cancer and I was given months. I was 88 and I thought, I’m going to have to get on and finish this book.”

John held a mini-launch of the book at Haverhill Library yesterday and plans to have a major launch in Wapping in early April.

The book has been registered to be sold online but for now it can be brought from John via email request at: johninsolesnr@gmail.com.