AN AUTHOR has released his second volume of memoirs about growing up on the Isle of Wight in the 1950s.

Gus Jonsson's Vectis Days follows inaugural volume, Vectis Voices, which was published in March 2020.

Vectis Days explores themes of childhood friendships, sexual awakening, austerity, family, mental health and wellbeing, and social acceptance within a small community in a post-war working-class society.

Information for the story has been sourced from a trove of written and visual childhood mementos once stored in a shoebox at the foot of the author's bed, but now existing only in his memory.

Gus said: “To enable this volume of my story to be told, I have again chosen to utilise sketches, paintings, old sepia curling family snaps and postcards – all of which exist forever in my mind’s eye.

"The prose and poetry of these memories of a mid-twentieth century Isle of Wight are therefore derived and documented from chronologically random remembrances.”

In Vectis Days, Gus returns to the mystery and misery of childhood on the Island during the 1950s.

Old favourites return but their eccentricities are matched by new faces, with particular attention paid to the friendship of a group of boys whose escapades and high-risk ventures would land them before the juvenile court or in A&E today.

Paperback editions of Vectis Days are available to purchase from the website of publishers Brandicat at www.brandicat.com at a cost of £9.99.