The Boy in a Trenchcoat - Taschenbuch

Frank Hurley was a lad torn between two countries - England, where he grew up and Scotland, the place of his birth and homeland of his beloved mother.

His English dad was in the Army during the Second World War and garrisoned north of the border. That’s when he met and wooed the woman of his dreams – the most beautiful girl in a village called Bannockburn - historically noted for the killing of English soldiers in a famous 14th century battle.

Post-war Britain was austere for many people – especially the Hurley family. What made it worse was that Frank’s mum’s heart was always back in Scotland. So much so that with her children in tow, she fled the suburban landscape of southern England and headed to the hills and glens of home.

That’s when the young Frank began a lifelong love affair with Scotland.

In this nostalgic, humorous and sometimes tragic story, Frank Hurley tells of the hell of living in homeless hostels in the sprawling London Borough of Croydon and the unbridled happiness of running free in Highland hills and catching trout in burns and lochs.

Frank tells how, growing up, he stole flowers from people’s gardens to sell in the local market; scrumped for apples; shovelled piles of manure to be sold around the doors as fertiliser; developed a near-fatal fascination for the bow and arrow and was a budding garden shed chemist until an experiment with chlorine gas accidentally killed off a neighbour’s cat.

Then there were dark days when his mum became a violent monster from the side effects of a sedative prescribed for anxiety in the 1950s.

Yet Frank survived this tumultuous childhood - protected, of course, by a ridiculous, outsized and second-hand trenchcoat that was never