In this captivating, beautifully written memoir of a childhood spent in Derbyshire's Peak District, Brenda Wallis Smith provides a fascinating account of her life in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, when local farmers ploughed with horses, miners walked home in the evenings with faces blackened with coal dust and, during the war, fields and haystacks were strafed by the Luftwaffe on their way home to Germany and the village postman took to announcing, ‘’E’s cummin’ ’ome, me darlin’, ’e’s cummin’ ’ome!’ Smith draws a vivid picture of the Derbyshire countryside and the Derwent Valley, with its rich history that included Sir Richard Arkwright, Florence Nightingale, and Alison Uttley. It is here that her maternal grandfather and uncles worked in Matlock's spas, on farms, and in local quarries, and her grandmother worked scrubbing the floors of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Matlock. Her paternal grandfather, John Bent Wallis, the son of a gardener, became, against all odds, an accomplished painter and the daily nature columnist for the Sheffield Telegraph. In A Pennine Childhood, the English countryside and the lives of its people come vividly to life. Brenda Smith was educated at Ambergate and Fritchley schools, and at Ernest Bailey's School in Matlock, Derbyshire. She worked as a librarian in both Derby and Belper, until her marriage to Joe Smith of Fritchley and their departure for America. In Chicago, she ran a recording studio for the charity Recording for the Blind. Every summer she comes home to replenish her Derbyshire roots. She is working on a sequel to A Pennine Childhood about her years in America, entitled Westward Ho!