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Each of us has a Golden Age in our imagination. As that age recedes it seems more and more golden. In reality it may not have been a golden age at all. Certainly it is very subjective. Mine is really from the late Victorian era - say 1900, up to say 1960. It wasn't really golden even for me. I remember being bombed, our roof falling in. My father remembered the trenches. And many of the things that seem swathed in a golden aura, were actually only like that because of injustice and inequality. But even so, I love my Golden Era, and as it is only a fictional memory, I have a right to it - as you do yours.

As far as books are concerned, I have many old favourites from that time. I like the pulp science fiction and detective stories. I am a sucker for Holmes and Watson, I yearn for a sober sensible advisor like Jeeves and I dream of those long, sun-filled holidays that the Swallows and Amazons enjoyed all those long years ago. I enjoy lots of modern books, but I like to think that nothing can match the golden age. Here are some of the things that made the golden age golden.

	Golden age transport - the sound, sight and smell of adventure! No one who saw railways as a boy (girl, too - maybe) can ever forget the overwhelming power and magic the great smoking screaming iron horses could evoke. And just the sight of a three or four funnelled liner steaming out of Southampton was worth a package tour to Disneyland any day! And the memory of Croydon Aerodrome, with its Art Deco control tower, its twin-engined aeroplanes, with passengers walking across the tarmac to an ex-WWII Lancaster now resplendent in cream and blue calling itself a Lancastrian. Oh for those days!
	Made in England! Everything was. There were factories all around, where people came running out at the end of the day, smiling and happy. (It can't really have been like that, can it? But who cares? At least you could get a job.) Round my way they made pumps, airbrushes, gramophones (just starting to be called record players), wirelesses, and golf-trolleys (I used to work there). I know factories are really bad, and all that, with multinationals polluting the globe, but someone has to make something, don't they, or are we back off to the caves? Or happy to let all those incredibly industrious chappies in the Far East pollute their countries? That's enough politics. Just look at the beautiful buildings that some of these factories had. The Hoover Factory in North London was a work of art, so was the Dunlop building. I'll get some pictures to put on the site.
	The books! Joseph Conrad, Conan Doyle, P G Wodehouse, Arthur Ransome, C S Lewis, H G Wells, Rider Haggard, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, H P Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, Dashiel Hammett, J R R Tolkein, The Rev. Audrey.

This was my golden age. Of course it is a subjective thing, but then so what? This isn't a golden age for me - but I don't grudge it to anyone if it is a golden age for him or her. In fact even my golden age changes according to the topic. Maybe the golden age of rail was before the Great War - whereas the golden age of air travel was between the wars. The golden age of the pulp magazines was also between the wars, but for me the golden age of science fiction was the late sixties to the early eighties. All those ACE books, the flowering of the SF conventions, and the breathless excitement of the new discoveries in physics finding their way into stories. It doesn't matter. The golden age is a magical thing, and like all such things, a chimera - a chameleon - a will 'o the wisp. There wasn't really any such time, but it was the most wonderful time in the history of the world!

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