In My Shoes

Geraldine Wilson's book is delightfully endearing and a sometimes shockingly honest autobiography about her childhood and her progress through life, and by the end of it the readers will feel that they know her intimately as she tells of her innermost thoughts and deepest concerns. A wounding taunt uttered by a child ("You don't know who you are or where you come from!") rocks her tiny secure universe and starts off a heartfelt search for her own identity during her early years.

Against a backdrop of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, her Catholic upbringing, Mods and Rockers England during the swinging Sixties, and life in the Royal Air Force and beyond to present times, it sensitively chronicles that search over the decades. Through her marriage, having children and a career, Geraldine was still driven relentlessly by the search for her roots, and it makes fascinating reading as the picture slowly, and often painfully, comes into focus.