Pon My Puff - A Childhood in 1920s Isle of Wight - Peter Stark Lansley
Peter Stark Lansley was born 1919 in Portsmouth and died in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, in 1999. As his father was in the Navy, he was mainly brought up by his grandparents William and Harriette Stark on the Isle of Wight upon which this book is based. He served in the Merchant Navy as a Radio Officer during the second World War and survived a torpedo attack during the Battle of the Atlantic when his ship MV Wandby was sunk. Peter worked for the Ministry of Aviation as a Telecommunications Officer retiring from Heathrow Airport and retiring to the Isle of Wight in 1981. In his spare time, he wrote short stories and was a member of the Southampton Writers Circle. Amongst Peter’s notebooks discovered after his death by his son Charles, were copies of letters from the famous Poet Laureate John Masefield to one of their members in which he encouraged aspiring writers to use the ‘magical’ in their writing. This Peter took on board in his own writing and can be clearly seen in his book 'Pon My Puff - A Childhood in 1920s Isle of Wight', published 26 years after his death in 2025 (second edition).
GENRE: Autobiographical Novel
Blurb:
This autobiographical novel is a true story of a child’s upbringing by his grandparents in 1920s Isle of Wight. Written from a four year old child’s world view, we feel the magical relationship between Peter and his grandfather. Through the stories that Peter tells, the reader is taken on a journey of childhood with his girlfriend Victoria. Through Charles Lansley’s researched annotations, we gain a greater understanding of what family and village life was like in the 1920s.
