Morecambe Bay, Lancashire: After his father’s death, a son clears out his parents’ house. When he finds a series of haunting photographs of Morecambe Bay, taken by his father towards the end of his life, it sparks a journey through the scattered memories and broken connections of five generations of family history.
Flowing from the vibrant post-war Jewish community of London’s east end, to the quiet suburban streets of Stanmore, and back to the Lancashire coast, the story cascades down through each generation’s shifting perspective. A wife appeases her charismatic yet destructive husband; a son
reimagines the jigsaw of his mother’s life; a granddaughter tries to heal the traumas of the past.
What Fools We Have Been is an exploration of memory, identity, and the trail of damage left in the wake of wartime trauma. It asks: What is it that makes us who we are? Is it possible to repair the
wreckage of the past?
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Hank Williams started his career as a stage director in the mid ’70s. He then worked as a community artist and community development worker before becoming a management development consultant. For the past fifteen years he has worked in the Higher Education sector, mentoring senior
leaders in UK universities as well as leading change programmes in Afghanistan and Bangladesh. He retired in 2026.
Hank wrote a screenplay in the 80s that won a commendation in a Sunday Times/BFI national competition. He has published three books relating to management development. His first novel – WHAT FOOLS WE HAVE BEEN – was published by Chiselbury Press in March 2026, just before his 70th birthday. Hank lives on the edge of Morecambe Bay. He has two step-sons and three granddaughters.
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@chiselbury. Main platforms used are Instagram, X, Threads and Facebook.
My thoughts: I really liked this history of a family, connected through photographs, told backwards, from the East End to North London’s Stanmore and up to Morecombe Bay, rolling back the generations to the end of the Second World War and the deep wounds it left in at least two generations.
The characters are fascinating, I especially liked the women, mostly Ruth, whose life provides the main narrative. Having lost her mother during the war, while she was evacuated out to the countryside, she stays close to her beloved father, Morris, and her uncles in the East End.
Eventually she marries Charlie and they move, as many Jewish families have done, to North West London. I actually live in Stanmore, which is much more lively these days than it was then, with a diverse community. I don’t think Ruth would be as lonely now as she is in the book. And perhaps things would have been different.
It’s her son, David, whose house in Morecombe Bay is where this both begins and ends. He has compiled a book of photos he’s taken, with his daily thoughts jotted below. His son Simon adds pictures of their ancestors – his grandparents, aunt, father, to the book and shares it with his own children.
Inspired, his daughter builds a family tree, and goes looking for the missing story – that of her great-aunt. The only person left who can tell her about the people she comes from. If she is to be the bearer of her family’s stories, she needs to fill in the gaps.
Moving and deftly written, this is a gentle and bittersweet story about family, the messy relationships we have with our nearest and dearest, and the healing that comes in the form of new generations who have none of the weight of those troubled times on their shoulders.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 
