A Staffordshire Man

Harry Titley was born in 1936 in a poor area of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, the county where he has lived for most of his life and about which most of his story is told.

The youngest child of a working class couple, both from families with long histories in coal mining, he grew up during the Second World War, where, in spite of lives being on hold, he had a childhood freedom that was not experienced by generations of children before or since. It is a time where so much has been lost and mainly forgotten. His sensitivity and his contentment with his lot helped to consign those times to memory, ""a thousand latent joys and half-forgotten sorrows.""

After completing his national service in Germany, he went to work at the English Electric company in Stafford, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. He married Ann in 1960, and they had one child, Julie, in 1961.

Although ""A Staffordshire Lad"" is Harry Titley's first book, he has written some poetry and a number of articles for a Canadian magazine and local newspapers. During his working life, he was editor of a company-wide magazine. He now lives in the North Staffordshire countryside with his wife.