Years on from the release of his book, author Nicholas Hagger tells the Guardian Series about his life growing up in the district and how he is performing his “homecoming” by speaking at Loughton Festival.

Mr Hagger writes: I had to write A View of Epping Forest in six months as my publisher wanted it to be out in time for the 2012 Olympics at nearby Stratford. I wrote it out of my memories and a lifetime’s historical research.

The book gives a historical view of Epping Forest and Forest places in Loughton, Chigwell, Woodford, Buckhurst Hill, Waltham Abbey, High Beach, Upshire, Epping, the Theydons and Chingford Plain.

It draws on my childhood memories, including Churchill’s visit to Loughton in April 1945. He spoke from the bottom step of the war memorial opposite Loughton cricket field just before he left for Potsdam, where he learned that he was no longer Prime Minister. I was close enough to touch him.

I included the three schools then held by the Hagger family’s Oak-Tree Group of Schools as many thousands of local people have passed through them and I felt my background knowledge should be preserved. In an Appendix I included 25 of my poems that were inspired by Epping Forest.

The book was reviewed by the Epping Forest Guardian on 10 May 2012 and has sold steadily. Many local families have a copy on their shelves.

I was following in the tradition of William Addison (later Sir William Addison), who wrote Epping Forest: Its Local Literary and Historical Associations (1945). He owned and ran Addison’s Bookshop (then at 169 High Road, Loughton), where in May 1945 (the year his book was published) I spent a book token I had been given for my sixth birthday. I remember him as tall, clerical and avuncular, and wearing a dark suit, white shirt and tie, perhaps because he was a JP and would later be sitting on the bench. He put a hand on my shoulder, guided me to a shelf and picked out the Observer’s Book of Trees. He placed the book in my hand, said it would help me learn about Epping Forest and set me on a course that would lead to A View of Epping Forest.

I came to Loughton in March 1943, when I was three. That May I began school at Essex House, 258 High Road, Loughton (demolished in 1958 and replaced by The Olive Tree restaurant). In March 1944 a string of German bombs fell on Epping Forest and six fell on Loughton cricket field. I was leaving our home, 52 Brooklyn Avenue, Loughton, with my father at the time to go to the post, and I can still see the twilit sky light up in a white flash and all our windows shatter. My father hurried back to the front door and I shouted gleefully, aged four, “A bomb, a bomb.”

The bombs damaged Essex House and classes were relocated to the School Hall at Loughton Methodist Church for the last few days of 1944’s spring term. Essex House, Loughton, closed and although many of my classmates were relocated to Essex House, Woodford, I was moved to Oaklands School on the corner of Trap’s Hill across the road, ‘the old Oaklands’. That too had been damaged by the same bombs, and on the first day of the summer term I found myself back in the School Hall at Loughton Methodist Church.

Sadly the School Hall was demolished by another bomb on 19 April 1944. By then I was back at ‘the old Oaklands’, and I remember sitting on a rug in the air-raid shelter in the school garden. Oaklands moved to its present location in Albion Hill in September 1944, and I remember sitting one break in the main field, which was full of buttercups.

I spent my boyhood around Epping Forest. I often roamed on the Stubbles and pond-dipped in the Strawberry Hill pond. I went on to Chigwell School, and in due course played cricket for Buckhurst Hill 1st XI (and took part in a couple of matches on Loughton cricket field). I left the Forest to see the world. I lectured at universities in Iraq, Japan (where I was a Professor of English Literature) and Libya, and then lived and worked in London. In 1982 I returned as Principal of Oaklands School in Loughton (where my wife became Headmistress for 14 years), founded Coopersale Hall School in Epping, acquired Normanhurst School in Chingford and most recently Braeside School in Buckhurst Hill, and presided over the four schools in the Hagger family’s Oak-Tree Group of Schools, which my son Matthew now runs as Group Managing Principal.

Nicholas is speaking at Loughton Methodist Church on Tuesday, May 9 at 7:30pm. Tickets are £5.