Books

WALKING DISTANCE

The story of Sidney Lee Gregory, the author's grandfather, who started life as a Romany Gypsy travelling the leafy lanes of rural Hampshire and Surrey from 1875. At the age of 12, he was picked up by the Barnardo's organisation and was sent to Canada as a Home Child. He worked on farms and in sawmills until he was old enough to work in the woods as a lumberjack, at one point being reported as having been killed by a tree. He took up with two Canadian First Nationer girls who were on the run from the hideous Residential School system which was trying to reinvent them as Europeans. In 1902, the work dried up, so Sidney joined the US Navy as a boilermaker and moved to San Francisco - just in time for the famous earthquake of 1906. He returned to Britain in 1917 in order to serve as a Royal Engineer in the Great War, but the war finished before his training did and so he never fought abroad. A mix-up with his discharge meant that he wasn't demobbed back to Canada, so he met and almost immediately married the author's grandmother. She already had two illegitimate children, and they had two more together. But she was to die young, and Sid found that he couldn't reintegrate into the Romany culture, nor could he find regular work, so the kids were taken into a home for destitute children. Sid eventually died in 1951 as a tramp.

Sidney Gregory was a little like Forrest Gump in that he couldn't help being near or influenced by famous people, or as a bystander to major world events - even though he had no power to influence any of them.

COLLECTED ESSAYS

Ever applied cat ear-mite drops to your own ears and wondered why you suddenly felt like catching a mouse? Ever been mistaken for Liam Neeson in a Chicago pizza queue, or spent a freezing night as a "small cog" in the arctic tundra of a democratic counting hall?

In this tapestry of modern British life, Andrew Gregory offers a meticulously indexed architecture of observation spanning 53 years of a life that is as cohesive as it is occasionally disappointing. Whether he is surviving a disastrous curry that emitted noxious fumes, or accidentally becoming a Bluetooth device after a sudden encounter with "Total Heart Block," Gregory’s reflections move seamlessly from the grand mechanics of statecraft to the intimate tragedies of the kitchen.

Inside these pages, you will meet a man who:· Navigated the "political rupture" of Brexit through the lens of disappearing croissants and surreal encounters in pub toilets.

· Is known to his grandchildren as "Gormless the robot" and to the medical profession as the owner of the "prostate which cried wolf".

· Perfected the three-minute culinary delicacy known as "Fish and Beans".

From the "poppy fields of Flanders" (a doctor’s confusing allegory for a sterility test) to the corridors of the Houses of Parliament, Gregory proves that even an "inconsequential person" can weave a life that is truly "ticketty-boo"