The Five Stone Steps

Tom Duncan, a Scot, joins the South Shields Police fresh from the trenches after the Great War. Little does he realise, when he first walks down the five stone steps into Keppel Street Police HQ (pictured opposite), that fifty years later he will be writing his memoirs at his desk by the fire, a glass of malt at hand. He tells of his early days as a bobby on the beat in Shields - tales of life and love in a major seaport, shipbuilding, and coal mining town where people liked their beer, the...