Question of Time

For people living in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, it was a time of extreme challenge and unprecedented change. The century had begun in the reign of Queen Victoria, and by the half way mark, two world wars and a growing list of new inventions had lifted the world into a completely new era.

What was it like to live just before the world of television, central heating, antibiotics, the National Health Service, motorways and the internet ... to experience smogs, barrage balloons and rationing, and to feel helpless as the League of Nations failed to prevent the Second World War?

What was it like to qualify as a dentist in London during the early 1930s and to lose your home as a result of the London Blitz?

What was it like to long for change, and how could ordinary people find a way of helping to make change possible?

A Question of Time offers a glimpse into the lives of two ordinary people who happened to live in those times. They kept diaries and they had memories; they wrote and they spoke; they were Leslie and Joan Sparey, and they were my parents.

This is their story.