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The Making of Me: A Writer's Childhood
First published by Slightly Foxed in 2026 in a limited edition of 2,000 copies.
198 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Robert Westall
122 books111 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Robert Westall was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England in 1929.
His first published book The Machine Gunners (1975) which won him the Carnegie Medal is set in World War Two when a group of children living on Tyneside retrieve a machine-gun from a crashed German aircraft. He won the Carnegie Medal again in 1981 for The Scarecrows, the first writer to win it twice. He won the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat and the Guardian Award in 1990 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Robert Westall's books have been published in 21 different countries and in 18 different languages, including Braille.
From: http://www.robertwestall.com/
Robert Westall was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England in 1929.
His first published book The Machine Gunners (1975) which won him the Carnegie Medal is set in World War Two when a group of children living on Tyneside retrieve a machine-gun from a crashed German aircraft. He won the Carnegie Medal again in 1981 for The Scarecrows, the first writer to win it twice. He won the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat and the Guardian Award in 1990 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Robert Westall's books have been published in 21 different countries and in 18 different languages, including Braille.
From: http://www.robertwestall.com/
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March 8, 2026
This is the latest (as of March 2026) in Slightly Foxed's series of memoirs, published quarterly, which I have been reading for some 5 years now.
Mostly published previously, some are very well known, but nonetheless always bring a surprise to me, because this one, like many, are from authors unknown to me, either as authors or through their works.
It is also unusual, in that the words in this memoir whilst written by Westall, were not written as a memoir. Instead they comprise fragments and other shorter pieces written by Westall, largely not for publication but rather as exercises or simply because he wanted to write. They were brought together after Westall's death by Lindy McKinney, a long-term friend, and focus largely his early years (up to his late teens), growing up in WW2 England, well before he became a full time writer in his 40s.
Westall is best remembered (though not by me) as a writer for children, though of topics which some, at the time, considered challenging for young writers. His first book, The Machine-Gunners, won the Carnegie Medal for Children's writing, and he won a second for his The Scarecrows, becoming the first writer to have won it twice.
The Machine-Gunners tells the story of a young boy who with his 'tribe' finds a downed German aircraft with crew dead but a machine gun still in working order. In his preface to this memoir, Brandon Robshaw notes that "...as Chekhov said, if a gun is found in Act 1, it must be fired in Act 5....". I have not read Westall's book, but the outline reminds of John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began.
Westall grew up in a class ridden society and whilst his family was not well off, in talking of his visits to his relatives, it is clear that there were people much worse off.
There is a lot of humor, even in times of war. The Westall family, like their neighbors, built their air raid shelter in their yard. Their first air raid sirens came as they sat down to 'dinner', and hence they ran to the shelter.
"I sat at the shelter door and stared at the sunlit path only inches from my nose, thinking, 'In here it's safe, but out there is Danger.' I couldn't resist putting a finger out into Danger, like it was a bowl of hot water. Nothing happened, so I put my whole hand out, whereupon my mother clouted me for mucking about. I saw a beetle crawling on the path, in Danger. It seemed quite unworried. I imagined a huge piece of shrapnel coming down and squashing it flat. But the beetle would never know it was in Danger, and it still wouldn't know when it was squashed flat. So for the beetle, war didn't exist. And the birds were singing as well, and I felt stupid cowering in this hole, and wondered why wars were only for people."
His mother started fretting about the dinner getting cold or being eaten by the dog, so scampered out to bring it to the shelter and went back again when realizing she had forgotten the bread and butter. And later again for two more excursions to collect dessert (prunes and custard) and to make cups of tea. Bombs started falling before washing up of the dishes could commence.
Westall described the early days of the Blitz (the Battle for Britain) as going 'so quickly and disastrously wrong in the spring of 1940 that it can only be likened to a [cricket] test match against Australia.'
He describes his first years in what we would call high school, when he was of a somewhat pudgy demeanor. He quickly learned that it was important that to not be the butt of jokes and worse, he had to stand out in a positive way. Luckily for him, he excelled academically (and unlike perhaps the current day), such was regarded as favorably as the sports jock or captain of the football team.
This lasted for a while until he suffered a rapid deterioration of his eyesight, such that he could not read the questions on the blackboard and hence could not respond with answers. To avoid 'the spectre of Specky-Four-Eyes', he devised a means of approaching the blackboard to memorize the questions written there, by challenging the teacher's handwriting and asking for clarification. When that wore thin, he pleaded for permission to attend the toilets, having loitered in front of the blackboard as he went out. That occurred on such a frequent basis that his teachers in the end of year report card suggested his parents ask his doctor for advice as to his apparent urinary/bladder troubles.
In his last school years, Westall had a growth spurt and lost his baby fat and became 'the ferociously muscled monster of the First Rugby XV' (at 6 foot tall and 12 and a half stone ie 183 cm and 79.5 kg!). He much enjoyed his newly found prowess at Rugby and left behind his "long sad years failing to be any good at soccer..., of dancing in helpless rage while a quicker opponent tapped the ball form foot to foot under my nose..."
A great depiction of a time that seems so long ago and yet it is of a time which paralleled that of my own father, though he lived in much different circumstances, having grown up in Brisbane Australia in the last days of WW2.
Mostly published previously, some are very well known, but nonetheless always bring a surprise to me, because this one, like many, are from authors unknown to me, either as authors or through their works.
It is also unusual, in that the words in this memoir whilst written by Westall, were not written as a memoir. Instead they comprise fragments and other shorter pieces written by Westall, largely not for publication but rather as exercises or simply because he wanted to write. They were brought together after Westall's death by Lindy McKinney, a long-term friend, and focus largely his early years (up to his late teens), growing up in WW2 England, well before he became a full time writer in his 40s.
Westall is best remembered (though not by me) as a writer for children, though of topics which some, at the time, considered challenging for young writers. His first book, The Machine-Gunners, won the Carnegie Medal for Children's writing, and he won a second for his The Scarecrows, becoming the first writer to have won it twice.
The Machine-Gunners tells the story of a young boy who with his 'tribe' finds a downed German aircraft with crew dead but a machine gun still in working order. In his preface to this memoir, Brandon Robshaw notes that "...as Chekhov said, if a gun is found in Act 1, it must be fired in Act 5....". I have not read Westall's book, but the outline reminds of John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began.
Westall grew up in a class ridden society and whilst his family was not well off, in talking of his visits to his relatives, it is clear that there were people much worse off.
There is a lot of humor, even in times of war. The Westall family, like their neighbors, built their air raid shelter in their yard. Their first air raid sirens came as they sat down to 'dinner', and hence they ran to the shelter.
"I sat at the shelter door and stared at the sunlit path only inches from my nose, thinking, 'In here it's safe, but out there is Danger.' I couldn't resist putting a finger out into Danger, like it was a bowl of hot water. Nothing happened, so I put my whole hand out, whereupon my mother clouted me for mucking about. I saw a beetle crawling on the path, in Danger. It seemed quite unworried. I imagined a huge piece of shrapnel coming down and squashing it flat. But the beetle would never know it was in Danger, and it still wouldn't know when it was squashed flat. So for the beetle, war didn't exist. And the birds were singing as well, and I felt stupid cowering in this hole, and wondered why wars were only for people."
His mother started fretting about the dinner getting cold or being eaten by the dog, so scampered out to bring it to the shelter and went back again when realizing she had forgotten the bread and butter. And later again for two more excursions to collect dessert (prunes and custard) and to make cups of tea. Bombs started falling before washing up of the dishes could commence.
Westall described the early days of the Blitz (the Battle for Britain) as going 'so quickly and disastrously wrong in the spring of 1940 that it can only be likened to a [cricket] test match against Australia.'
He describes his first years in what we would call high school, when he was of a somewhat pudgy demeanor. He quickly learned that it was important that to not be the butt of jokes and worse, he had to stand out in a positive way. Luckily for him, he excelled academically (and unlike perhaps the current day), such was regarded as favorably as the sports jock or captain of the football team.
This lasted for a while until he suffered a rapid deterioration of his eyesight, such that he could not read the questions on the blackboard and hence could not respond with answers. To avoid 'the spectre of Specky-Four-Eyes', he devised a means of approaching the blackboard to memorize the questions written there, by challenging the teacher's handwriting and asking for clarification. When that wore thin, he pleaded for permission to attend the toilets, having loitered in front of the blackboard as he went out. That occurred on such a frequent basis that his teachers in the end of year report card suggested his parents ask his doctor for advice as to his apparent urinary/bladder troubles.
In his last school years, Westall had a growth spurt and lost his baby fat and became 'the ferociously muscled monster of the First Rugby XV' (at 6 foot tall and 12 and a half stone ie 183 cm and 79.5 kg!). He much enjoyed his newly found prowess at Rugby and left behind his "long sad years failing to be any good at soccer..., of dancing in helpless rage while a quicker opponent tapped the ball form foot to foot under my nose..."
A great depiction of a time that seems so long ago and yet it is of a time which paralleled that of my own father, though he lived in much different circumstances, having grown up in Brisbane Australia in the last days of WW2.
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