Book review: Home Park Heaven, by Radu Herklots

Home Park Heaven – A Plymouth Childhood, by Radu Herklots; published by Troubador Publishing, price: £9.99

On the cover, it states the book is ‘A love letter to a time and a place, a City and its beloved football team’.

It sounds a little bit over the top, but by the end you realise that this is a pretty accurate description of what lies inside this text of just under a century of pages.

It helps that the author Radu Herklots has writing pedigree. He retired after almost 40 years as a lawyer to write full time.

His cathedral-based crime novels The Cage, Leap of Faith, and The Turbulent Bishop feature private detective John Tedesco, named after a Plymouth Argyle player of the late 1960s.

Home Park Heaven is Herklots’ first foray into non-fiction and is largely a childhood memoir of growing up in the 1960s in Plymouth.

Spiritual home

Herklots’ dad became vicar of St Bartholomew’s, Milehouse, which was, fortunately for the young Radu, opposite Plymouth Agyle’s Home Park.

He takes us on a journey through his early life – his school days, joining the cubs, playing football and, then, going to see Argyle.

He was quickly hooked and expresses it in a typically light-hearted way.

“Home Park became my spiritual home,” he writes.

“Sorry, Dad – St Barts just didn’t cut it. The crowds were much smaller there. The songs weren’t as funny, you always knew the result, and there were no programmes to collect.”

Written in short and sweet chapters, the book races along.

The author goes on to explain his heartbreak at leaving Plymouth behind at the age of 15. This was due to his father’s relocation to Hampshire.

We eventually come up to date with an emotional return trip with his father in 2012, a 60th-birthday visit with his wife, and a crucial Argyle encounter at Home Park in 2024.

Those with Plymouth memories from the 1960s and 70s will love it and yet it has got wider appeal.

There are bits of football sprinkled throughout, but it also captures the culture of the era and what life was like.

A charming personal story excellently told, this book should appeal to Janners and non-Janners alike.

John Lyons

Rating: 8/10

READ MORE: Book review: Gentleman Jim McCarthy, by Neil Thompson