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.
I found it an excellent read and totally absorbing. I felt so close to the family members, I was sad and happy and excited, as various happenings developed. James
ReplyDeleteIt is a very good read- -a social history of Bradford made into a novel. Like all good historical novels it is difficult to tell sometimes where the facts end and the fiction begins. A Comben
ReplyDeleteI much enjoyed 'Something in the Aire' - the Esholt story in particular has always fascinated me. You have created a rich cast of different characters and largely avoided the stereotypes, which is extremely difficult to do, especially when writing about 19th century Yorkshire.
ReplyDeleteMartin Wainwright, formerly Northern Editor of The Guardian
Against Hudson’s textile mill on Canal Road, with its mean working conditions that eventually kill his foreman Jack Ackroyd, Salt’s ‘palace of industry’, more than three miles outside the stink and disease of central Bradford, glows like a beacon of hope.
ReplyDeleteBradford Telegraph & Argus
Strongly recommended. What a great debut novel, by Stuart Campbell, not just for those with an association with Bradford and the Aire Valley, but anyone who enjoys a well crafted and page turning literary effort. Hopefully the first of many to carry his name. Well done.
ReplyDeleteRail Enthusiast
I loved the descriptions in the outdoor scenes, the moorland and the countryside, and I was taken right back to my childhood trips to Shipley Glen, and the shop that sold sarsaparilla, whatever that was. Anyone who knows Bradford and is interested in its people and its history will find the book enlightening and enjoyable - a good read!
ReplyDelete2014-11-28 Trevor ....
Anybody who has lived or who knows Bradford and the surrounding areas will appreciate the sense of details and the in depth research that has gone into this book, as well as the fact that the author is a local boy which helps to give the book a very visual aspect.
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel which on reading the last page left me with the sensation that the story could be continued so I will be on the lookout for Something in the Aire 2.
Clyde
“Something in the Aire” is Stuart Campbell’s neat title for an intriguing way of presenting the history of Bradford in fictional form, through the eyes of generations of its inhabitants. Beginning with the Ackroyd family’s hard life in the mills of 1843, when poor housing, long working hours and tragic deaths from cholera were the result of the headlong pace of industrialisation, it moves on through the generations as prosperity grew and improvements began.
ReplyDeleteThe story comes up to modern times with the family, but the sewage pollution and how it was eventually solved stands out as the most unusual subject in this interesting book.
Pamela R
From Arthur Anderson.
ReplyDeleteIn a modern world of cheap man-made fibres it's hard to imagine previous generations who relied on wool for their livelihoods. Yet it was this natural product shorn from millions of sheep that was responsible for the growth of many of our great town and cities.
Nowhere was that more true than Bradford in Yorkshire where by 1840 two thirds of all England's wool was being processed. Ten years later, the advent of steam power saw Bradford with 129 mills employing thousands of workers. By then the population had grown to 100,000 and was set to double again by the end of the century.
However, as with other industrial boom-towns, the surge in population and industrial effluent turned the local watercourses into open sewers. Business entrepreneurs may have become rich but all too often their workers lived in poverty with poor sanitation responsible for death and disease. In 1837 a sanitary surveyor declared Bradford to be "the most filthy town I visited with open cesspits and effluent laden watercourses."
It's again this background that Bradford-born journalist and broadcaster Stuart Campbell has written an impressive first novel Something in the Aire which in modern story-telling parlance could be described as a docudrama.
Basing his book on historical fact, Stuart Campbell builds a compelling tale woven from the threads of five generations of the Ackroyd family. Their story begins in 1843 and follows the family through the industrial revolution as they fight the indifference of mill owners to poverty, scarlet fever, smallpox and cholera created by the "golden fleece." It is claimed that Bradford had one of the lowest life expectancies in the country with only a third of children born to textile workers likely to reach their fifteenth birthday while one in five babies would not live beyond their first birthday.
This is a rich narrative told over more than 100 years and five generations of one family and embraces hate, envy, confrontation, world wars, love and compassion intermingled to tell the tale of Bradford lifting itself out of squalor to become a city of wealth and influence.
Something in the Aire is not only an aborbing novel - it also holds a mirror to an important part of the social and economic history of the nation. On both counts it deserves to be read.
As one who is unfamiliar with the area I felt that the book described vividly the time and place covered by the narrative. The development from the squalor of the Industrial Revolution to more enlightened times shown through the lives of the characters was skilfully handled.I am sure anyone familiar with the area would be struck by the attention to detail. I actually enjoyed the technical details relating to the battle against pollution!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Dickie
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA well constructed and well researched read, the story had me gripped from cover to cover. I've never been to Bradford but that doesn't matter, by the end I felt like I knew it well. Very likeable and down to earth characters but the main character has to be the city itself.
ReplyDeleteMarian Legg
This book follows the lives of 2 families over 5 generations, centred in and around Bradford and starts in 1843. It is fascinating reading about the conditions of those times, how hard life was and how much the wool industry affected people, with a huge divide between those who owned the mills and the workers. A great deal of history has been incorporated into the book, and the very fact that it is a story makes more of an impression than just reading a history book. I loved reading about local places like Saltaire and Shipley Glen, as they are on the doorstep and I've been to them.
ReplyDeleteAs with all families, some offspring leave their home town and start lives elsewhere. There is huge diversity where some of them end up and what they do for a living.
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