Norman: Through My Eyes has evolved over 50 years. Always ahead of his time, Norman Hastings began researching his own family history well before this national obsession became what it is today, and more latterly through a collaboration between Norman and his daughter to convert his notes into an electronic record.

The motivation for the book was founded on conversations held with Norman and his mother about her own deprived childhood.

Throughout the book Norman gives a unique view of his parents’ family: the Wilemans of Earl Shilton and Hastings of Leicester. It also chronicles his parents turbulent marriage and his own life growing up as a small boy in the poorest neighbourhoods of Leicester during the 1930s and 1940s.

Sometimes poignant and sad, but mostly nostalgic and humorous, Norman recalls his own childhood with fondness and understanding, but one has to remember that what he and his family experienced wasn’t unique in any way for that era.

Whether recalling his experiences as a St Barnabas Church choirboy and singing at the now closed Towers Mental Hospital, or his confinement in Groby Road Sanatorium with TB or being a Moat Boys school boy in a Leicester at war, the subtle way Norman’s own story evolves gives an insight into a world now gone but not that far from living memory. 

Norman would often say, "children grow up in spite of their parents." This is true, but because of his own deprived childhood Norman remained a children’s champion throughout his adult life and coined the phrase "every child matters" before it became a 21st-century social care slogan.

Norman passed away August 27, 2011, aged 84 years following a short battle with cancer. Whilst he never lived to see his book published the drive to tell his and his mother’s story remained strong to the end. I am proud to now be doing this on Norman’s behalf through this book. Norman: Through My Eyes. A social and personal history of Leicester.