BORN among a lively backstreet brood of six children, Barbara McNicholas could scarcely have dreamed that her childhood days would be recaptured in a book in which her remarkable mother is the central character and which has proved an immediate runaway success.

Barbara (55) from Common Street, Thatto Heath, gushed with justifiable enthusiasm in forwarding a copy of the nostalgia-oozing publication, 'The Broken Biscuit', penned over a period of eight years by her elder brother, John Cowell.

Spanning two world wars, it is a deeply human tale redolent of back entries, middens, steaming tin bathtubs, childhood games in cobbled entries and the everyday humour and stresses of life dealt out in equal measure among Lancashire families of the working-class kind.

Its intriguing title is taken from the fact that a bag of broken biscuits, bought for a copper or two at the local marketplace, was a special treat for kiddies like the Cowell family during the hard-up 1930s.

The scene is set in East Lancashire but it is one that will be familiar to any mature reader of working-class origins, whether they hail from St Helens, Prescot or any of their surrounding satellite towns and villages. It was written by John as a tribute to his mother, Winifred, a dedicated veteran charity worker who, despite life's trials and tribulations, remains amazingly cheerful and active at the age 86.

Poverty, tragedy and wry humour are ingredients stirred into this moving and highly-readable publication which runs to more than 370 pages and contains memory-jerking pictures of weaving sheds, corner shops, batteries of tall, smoke-billowing factory chimneys, and ancient landmark buildings, many of which have now been erased from the Northern scene.

It charts the highs and lows of raising half-a-dozen children against the handicap of an unreliable husband (a bad 'un, in plain Lancashire language).

But John takes care not to paint his mother as a saint . . . holding up her human faults, as well as her motherly virtues, for close inspection.

It is a kaleidoscope of memories punctuated by bits of old-fashioned humour in the form of jokes from those early times.

One that I particularly like goes as follows:

The local bobby collared a man climbing out of the back-window of a house. "Right, mi lad," he said, "now I've copped thee!"

"It's aw reight officer," came the reply, "this is mi own house . . . the wife's just donkey-stoned the front step."

Anyone keen on 'the-way-we-were' themes will thoroughly enjoy this publication which has proved such a success that the first print run was almost immediately snapped up and a follow-up run produced.

'The Broken Biscuit' can be obtained (price £6.50) from Wardleworths Bookshop in St Helens; and there is also a copy available at St Helens Central Library.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.