Judges' comment: "From a loveless wartime childhood comes a generous and loveable memoir written from a child's-eye view. Utterly lacking in self-pity, it's laugh-out-loud funny."
Mum and Dad - Squibs and Bert - were a complete mystery to Brian Thompson as he grew up in Cambridge and London during the 1940s. His mother danced with the Yanks all night and slept under a fake fur coat all day, and when his father bothered to come home he resolutely discouraged Brian in everything. Other children were evacuated out of the big cities, but Brian found himself travelling into London, where he spent much of the Blitz with an eccentric swarm of relations. Keeping Mum presents a portrait of boyhood as rich and mysterious as anything fiction can provide.
Brian Thompson has written for the stage, radio, television, and is the author of four novels. He divides his time between Oxford, England, and the South of France.
