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My Pal Spadger
One of a series of top-quality fiction for schools, this is the story of Bill and Spadger's progress from school to work in mill and mine in the Lancashire of the Twenties.
128 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 1982
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15 people want to read
About the author
Bill Naughton
42 books10 followersWilliam John Francis Naughton (1910-1992) was a popular ‘working class’ author and playwright who was born in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland in June 1910 and died in early January 1992 in Ballasalla, Isle of Man. He was four years old when his family moved to Bolton, Lancashire, where, after leaving school around 1924, he worked as a weaver, coal-bagger and lorry-driver, enjoying a variety of experience and knowledge before starting to write with a rare honesty and perception about ‘ordinary’ people. Although ‘Alfie’ is the play with which he will always be associated, mostly because of the film starring Michael Caine, he was a prolific writer of quality work which included such notable plays as ‘My Flesh My Blood’, ‘All In Good Time’; plus novels, short stories and children’s books. Two other plays were made into films –‘Spring and Port Wine’, with James Mason as Rafe Crompton, and ‘The Family Way’, which starred John Mills. His work also included ‘One Small Boy’, ‘A Roof Over Your Head’, and short story collections such as ‘Late Night on Watling Street’ ‘The Bees Have Stopped Working’, and ‘The Goalkeeper's Revenge’. Among his most popular autobiographical works, well worth seeking out, are ‘On The Pig’s Back’ and ‘Saintly Billy’.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 25, 2023
Second or third reading, many years after the first. And it is an even better book than I thought. As a portrayal of growing up in a northern town in the 1920s it is very good but its excellence lies in the freedom, the true friendship, the joy of being young. In this, at its best, it touches Le Gloire de mon Pere and Le Grand Meaulnes.
It passes the Simon test of making me laugh many times and a whole flood of tears.
2012
Almost as good as The Goalkeeper's Revenge.
It passes the Simon test of making me laugh many times and a whole flood of tears.
2012
Almost as good as The Goalkeeper's Revenge.
July 21, 2016
Every week, back when I was just a boy, I'd be dragged down to the local shopping center by my mum. Now, this place was called Huyton Village, but I've got to be honest, it didn't much resemble a village in the truest sense of the word. It was more like something the Northern Koreans would throw up if they had a few tons of concrete left over after, after knocking up a statue of one of their Dear Leaders.
back then, my now long departed mother would drag me to various places to pay bills (this was long before the world had heard of standing orders.) I would tag along occasionally complaining and dragging my feet until finally, just before she headed into the supermarket, she would deposit me at the library and tell me I had forty five minutes to go pick three books.
My time.
The best time.
Book time.
Left alone in library, wandering the aisles and staring up at the shelves, so many books, so little time, it was heaven. I'd normally pick two "wordy" books (what I called novels (come on! I was only eleven or twelve!)) and one factual book. I'd take them over with my red face, to the nice young lady I was too shy to talk to beyond: "These please" and "Thank you."
Once I had the books I'd scuttle off and sit on the wall outside, and wait for my mum so we could head home, and I could dive into the other-worlds I had in my bag.
One day, something special happened. Something so special, that even now, nearly forty years later, it still makes me smile and tingle a tiny bit.
One day, I met Spadger.
Oh what a book! I read it in one Sunday sitting, and then I read it again over the next couple of days, taking my time and swilling the words and the tales of boyhood joy, like they were the finest of wines I wasn't yet allowed to taste.
My Pal Spadger changed my life.
I read it, and I wanted to become a writer.
It was as simple as that.
Okay, it took me thirty five years to finally become that writer, but Spadger put me on the road I'm on today. So to Bill Naughton I say thank you, and to you I say if you have got kids, read them this book, so that in thirty years, they'll thank you too.
Tony
back then, my now long departed mother would drag me to various places to pay bills (this was long before the world had heard of standing orders.) I would tag along occasionally complaining and dragging my feet until finally, just before she headed into the supermarket, she would deposit me at the library and tell me I had forty five minutes to go pick three books.
My time.
The best time.
Book time.
Left alone in library, wandering the aisles and staring up at the shelves, so many books, so little time, it was heaven. I'd normally pick two "wordy" books (what I called novels (come on! I was only eleven or twelve!)) and one factual book. I'd take them over with my red face, to the nice young lady I was too shy to talk to beyond: "These please" and "Thank you."
Once I had the books I'd scuttle off and sit on the wall outside, and wait for my mum so we could head home, and I could dive into the other-worlds I had in my bag.
One day, something special happened. Something so special, that even now, nearly forty years later, it still makes me smile and tingle a tiny bit.
One day, I met Spadger.
Oh what a book! I read it in one Sunday sitting, and then I read it again over the next couple of days, taking my time and swilling the words and the tales of boyhood joy, like they were the finest of wines I wasn't yet allowed to taste.
My Pal Spadger changed my life.
I read it, and I wanted to become a writer.
It was as simple as that.
Okay, it took me thirty five years to finally become that writer, but Spadger put me on the road I'm on today. So to Bill Naughton I say thank you, and to you I say if you have got kids, read them this book, so that in thirty years, they'll thank you too.
Tony
August 6, 2011
Absolutely delightful portrait of life in an English mining town in the 1920's. The author of "Alfie" paints a poignant, sometimes idealized life of two boys and their friendship and relations with neighbors, friends and co-workers. This is clearly auto-biographical and it is clearly a book likely to be appreciated by adults than the supposed young adult audience it was marketed to. Hard to find, but worth the search.
June 21, 2016
Read this near the end of my tenure in Primary School.
Couldn't find find it for love, money or depraved sexual favors until I found a copy in the family home. I must've forgotten to return it or something.
Couldn't find find it for love, money or depraved sexual favors until I found a copy in the family home. I must've forgotten to return it or something.
February 6, 2019
This was a bit of real nostalgia for me. I first read it back in the early eighties for school, but also let my grandfather borrow it. It was a book I enjoyed then and now, but it sparked some real memories in gramps of his own childhood that came back to me when I re-read it recently.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews