Courtship Correspondence

Twenty years after the devastating loss of his wife to breast cancer the author has decided to allow the world to read all the love letters they exchanged during their courtship. The correspondence began shortly after they first met in 1967 and continued to a few months before they married in 1970. He was an apprentice engineer in the west London suburbs and his future wife was training to be a teacher at a college near Reading, thirty miles away. It is an uplifting story of two young adults learning about each other and themselves. A tantalizing memoir of how a newfound friendship turns into true love. Sometimes it becomes a bumpy ride having to deal with the frustrations brought about by separation. The author provides extensive background information between the letters giving the reader a greater understanding of their lives and the social history of that time. The authors' motivation was not only to create a memoir of those very special years and by doing so completing another stage in his personal grieving process but also to give his children and grandchildren an insight into the formation of a relationship that led to their existence. The letters have been accurately replicated in chronological order creating a memoir of how their relationship developed. They exchanged letters every week during College term time providing an honest and personal insight into their thoughts and feelings during this budding romance that grew into true love. It is a love story recalled with sincerity and sensitivity to which the author has added his own current reflections. The author experienced once more that tingle of excitement when opening the next letter as felt when first picking it up from the doormat almost fifty years ago. 'Courtship Correspondence' is not just a series of love letters but documents containing considerable substance of the lives of a trainee teacher and an engineering apprentice, enhanced by the added detail of their family life, social activities and moral values. The author has included monthly news items relating to national and international events occurring in that period enabling senior readers to indulge in some 1960's nostalgia as they recall what they were doing at that time. In some ways this account of a developing relationship flies in the face of the accepted image of what the swinging 60's was all about. There are no selfish excesses in this story of two youngsters from loving and respectful families whose lives gradually entwine in a very traditional way. This is a story of romance and true love combined with the everyday realities of young adults preparing for a life together.