The city of my youth - a landscape of storied mills and belching chimneys, of horse-drawn carts laden with bursting wool sacks, of rackety tramcars swaying between smoke-blackened Victorian elevations- is a fast fading memory today. After a century of domination, the woollen industry that brought Bradford considerable wealth and civic pride suffered rapid decline, leaving only the industrial archaeology of that ‘golden age’ for local historians to pore over.
Through the fictional lives of five generations of one family, I set out to chronicle the evolution of this textile city from its squalid origins during unprecedented growth, to the dawn of workers’ rights and civic enterprise. In 1843, Jack and Fanny Ackroyd found a dynasty that must survive morbid illness, social injustice, and the horror of war to reach the relatively sunlit uplands of modern life. Central to this tapestry of life and loves, local aristocracy are forced to provide the ultimate solution to Bradford’s pollution woes, while providing an intriguing enigma that plays out across national and international boundaries.
This book is not meant to be a biography, although I have used memories of growing up in the Aire valley to add colour to my research. It was only on its completion I realised it was my paean to the city that gave me life.
