I was ten years old when the Second World War was declared by Britain and France against Germany on 3rd September 1939, but for my family and me the war really began somewhat earlier.

At 96 years old, John Skidmore offers a remarkable window into a vanished world – his childhood on an English farm in the 1930s, where families lived without electricity, indoor plumbing or phones during the Great Depression.
Born in 1929 and raised near Colchester after his father died in the flu epidemic, John’s vivid memories capture the simple rhythms and extraordinary changes of rural life nearly a century ago. Now retired in Kangaroo Valley since 1994, he shares these precious glimpses of a bygone era.