'First love, last love' 

Authors: Katie Flynn/ Judith Saxton 

Publisher: Arrow Books / 2000

Pages: 512

It was the mention of Beccles that started the memories.

For Beccles is the name of the small town near Norwich where my brothers and sister celebrated the death of our brother Mario on the very last day that Britain was in the European Union, on 31 January 2020.

He had lived his last years just a few miles away.

Beccles is a small town, as I said, on the sea shore but of this we were not made aware. We headed straight to the hotel we had booked, had a meal and went straight to bed.

The next day, after the funeral, we left Beccles and drove to Southend on the Thames estuary.

There, facing a deserted Pier, I watched, while in London the Conservative government tried to rustle up an artificial atmosphere of enthusiasm that was completely lost in the drizzling rain and cold of Southend. 

Beccles is the setting of the book.

It is a small harbour on the North Sea with most of its inhabitants being like Sybil and Lizzie Cream, poor fishermen eking out a harsh living.

In contrast, their friends, the Wintertons, lived in a manor house in all luxury.

But there was no class consciousness between them.

Christina Winterton was the same age as Sybil Cream and the two girls were inseparable.

And Ralph Winterton, three years older, found Lizzie Cream irresistible.

Then war came to East Anglia, and so did Manchester-born Fenn Kitzmann, now of the American Army Air Force.

At their first meeting he is attracted by Sybil's subtle charm but before he sees her again her own personal tragedy has struck and he finds her changed almost out of recognition.

Author Judith Saxton lived for many years in the northeast.

A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of them were later broadcast on Radio Merseyside.

She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of her family members about life in the city in the early years of the 20th century.

For many years she had to cope with ME but she continued to write. She also wrote as Katie Flynn.

She died in 2019, aged 82. In all, she wrote some 90 novels.