WELCOME to BRANDiCAT
Literature, Art and Music revealing the Isle of Wight

"Came then the silver shingle upon the sand

Came the tides and salt green sea

The forever music of my island

Held tight within a singing shell"

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Gus Jonsson is one of the Isle of Wight’s most descriptive storytellers. His childhood memories of growing up on the island in the 1950s are recalled in his two enthralling autobiographies, Vectis Voices and Vectis Days.

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Each volume explores family, friendships, loves found and lost, austerity, health, wellbeing and social acceptance within a small community in a post-war, working-class society.

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Gus's memoirs are essential reading for islanders — and for everyone who appreciates great prose and poetry.

 

“To enable my story to be told, I have chosen to utilise sketches, paintings, old sepia curling family snaps and postcards, all of which exist forever in my mind’s eye. Therefore, the vehicles of prose and poetry of these mid-twentieth century memories are the conduit by which they are written and recorded.”

— Gus Jonsson