alobear | The History of VSO review

My mum and I have started a new series of fictional letters, this time set in the 1960s. In order to avoid having to do lots of research about 60s Britain, I decided my character would join VSO and spend a year teaching in Ghana. Of course, this led to me having to do lots of research about VSO and 60s Ghana!

The research began with The History of VSO by Dick Bird, which turned out to be a very enjoyable and fascinating read, as well as extremely helpful from a writing point of view. It really is astounding how little preparation went into the first VSO placements, and I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified that a group of 18-year-old boys randomly volunteered to spend a year in developing countries in 1958, without having a clue what they were letting themselves in for.

The book was very inspiring - but luckily only in the sense of giving me ideas for my story, and not in the sense of encouraging me to ship off to Africa.