It Was Like This

One young man. One extraordinary year. A world about to change forever.Sydney, on the eve of the Second World War. Ted Taylor is nineteen, restless, and about to discover who he is. Over a single unforgettable year he pulls on the cap of a surf lifesaving club, learns to read a wave and hold a line, and chases surf championships and pretty girls in equal measure through the larrikin world of the beach.Then the war comes. Ted trades the sunlit surf for the grey swell of the North Atlantic, bound for the Royal Navy and a very different kind of danger.Told with humour, tenderness and an unmistakable Australian voice, It Was Like This is the story of a boy becoming a man in the last golden summer before everything changed.Based in large part on the author's own life, James Yeomans's manuscript was edited and brought to publication by his grandson, Rob Sheahan, so that a remarkable Australian story would not be lost.