about the book

My journey in writing this book started about forty years ago, not long before the death of my grandmother, Catherine Melia. I seem to recall a conversation in which she let slip the name of someone I had never heard of before, ‘Ted’ Melia. I cannot remember if I asked at the time, but I do recall her indicating that he was the ‘black sheep’ of the family. She did not elaborate on why she regarded him as the family villain or give anything at all away in terms of details. It would be some years later before I found out any more.

Life intervened. I got married, had exams to pass and a career to start building. It was a dozen years before the subject appeared again. I was quite interested in the story behind the family transport business, and how it managed to suddenly disappear. It was this interest that prompted a number of conversations with Austin Melia (‘Junior’), my own uncle. Austin had worked for Melia’s Transport after completing his national service and knew ‘Uncle Ted’ quite well. Austin could tell me about what had happened to the company, who this Edward was, and what he had done to warrant his unflattering ‘black sheep’ moniker.

Photographs and documents appeared from forgotten albums and files, and the stories and anecdotes about those war years and earlier were shared. I was told that Edward had been sent to prison ‘after the war’ and that it had something to do with stolen cars. His life story sounded fascinating and I basically got the bug. I needed to know more, not just about who I now knew was my ‘Great Uncle Ted, but about the whole generation, including the grandfather I never met. For a time, I settled for building a family tree, a couple of generations, but it was really the stories around the inter-war generation that got my attention. More documents, photos and stories were exhumed, including the full tale behind the ‘crime’. Having established an outline understanding of the ‘generational story’, it became clear that there was more to it than just Edward. It was also the story of a wider family, and of a family owned business, from birth to a premature death at the hands of an arguably well-intentioned government, undertaking a highly politicised act of national corporate vandalism. This final act, nationalisation, irked not just my grandfather but my father and uncle. My grandfather’s generation felt cheated out of something they had built from nothing over a thirty-year period, and my father, no less than forty years after the event, would still refer to the Labour Party’s act in highly derogatory terms. He had acquired a genetic dislike of Socialism.

So, why the book?

Well, family history is interesting but only up to a point. A document, a newspaper article, a headline or an anecdote is just what it is; an ephemeral and often isolated fragment of time. These shattered fragments are simply not enough in themselves to tell a story. To make the past more interesting needed life, people, characters, personalities, circumstances and a whole lost environment reanimated. It required issues and conflict, and the whole array of nuance, jealousy, rivalry, love, like, dislike, affairs, aspiration, disappointment, births and deaths; the kinds of things you find in almost all family situations and social circles, with emotions often magnified in a family business. Thus, the book was born. An attempt to infuse an almost forgotten generation of the family with some life.

‘Family Business’ starts with a prologue. It is the end of the Victorian century and beginning of a new one, and Great Britain still stands at the zenith of its power. The ‘Great War’ is still some years away and the rise of Germany and the United States, while vaguely threatening, are not yet a matter for concern. Armed with an education, Austin (‘Senior’) has high hopes both for himself and his family. Brought-up the son of a miner, and in relative austerity, he has managed to break free from the cycle of poverty and become a respected steam engineer. Despite his father’s untimely death, he is now married and has a young family himself. The occasion is sombre but he is still full of optimism.

The epilogue hints at a sequel but there are aspects of the family circumstance that are still too recent, and perhaps a little ‘raw’, for the printed word. In time perhaps. A prequel is a possibility, maybe the story of Austin and Emma. Austin’s father and mother could not read or write. His wife, Emma, was the daughter of a Little Lever slate merchant who apparently owned a quarry in North Wales. And yet her father was ‘Illegitimate’, which begs the question of how he managed to obtain the funding to create a business. Social climbing in the nineteenth century, especially by those deemed an embarrassment, was not without its challenges. And yet he did. There is also the story of how Anglican Emma married Catholic Austin; at some point she converted. There is a book in somewhere within Austin and Emma’s life story - a rags to relative riches tale, and likely a Victorian religious battle.

I have tried to write a book to tell a story rather than create a work of art. Florid and highly introspective narrative would not really have worked. While it is not of the action thriller type it nonetheless needed to move along at a respectable pace or, quite frankly, it would probably have ended up as two volumes rather than a respectably long single.

I hope it works and that you like it. 
 

A Bolton clog maker, about 1920

Bolton Post Office

Bolton Town Hall

about the author

Ged Melia is married with two adult children and lives on the West Pennine Moors, not far from Bolton in the North West of England. An earlier publication, ‘Experiencing Change’ (Management Books 2000 Ltd, 2010), is a management text but ‘family business’ is his first foray into the world of historical fiction. Ged’s multi-decade interest in genealogy provided the initial impetus for writing a historical novel, but he ultimately realised that it was the sort of people they were, the lives the led, and the challenges they faced that is of far more interest.   

Bolton Railway Station

Early postcard

Early postcard

Early postcard

Family photo