Home Park Heaven : A Plymouth Childhood

A love letter to a time and place, a city and its beloved football team, Home Park Heaven is uplifting, frequently hilarious, poignant and moving.

Established crime writer, Radu Herklots, revisits his childhood and adolescence in Plymouth with Technicolor clarity.

As well as his Plymouth Argyle heroes, much of 1960’s and early 1970’s Plymouth life is here.

Names like Angela Rippon, Sue Lawley, David Owen, Sir Francis Chichester, Robert Lenkiewicz and Beryl Cook bounce off the pages, together with Ivor Dewdney, Mimi Law, Robert Daniel and Gus Honeybun.

We read of the author’s shock at being plucked away from his idyllic home opposite Central Park at the pivotal age of fifteen before we come up to date with an emotional return trip with his late father in 2012, a sixtieth birthday visit with his wife and yet another crucial encounter at Home Park in 2024.

If you see someone on a Plymouth bound train giggling uncontrollably it is a fair chance that they are reading Home Park Heaven.