LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014
'A symphonic poem about postwar England and Englishness … A masterpiece' Financial Times
The 1950s were not grey. In Jonathan Meades's detailed, petit-point memoir they are luridly polychromatic. They were peopled by embittered grotesques, bogus majors, vicious spinsters, reckless bohos, pompous boors, drunks, suicides. Death went dogging everywhere. Salisbury had two industries: God and the Cold War. For the child, delight is to be found everywhere - in the intense observation of adult frailties, in landscapes and prepubescent sex, in calligraphy and in rivers.
This memoir is an engrossing portrait of a disappeared provincial England, a time and place unpeeled with gruesome relish.
ISBN: | 9781857029055 |
Publication date: | 26th February 2015 |
Author: | Jonathan Meades |
Publisher: | 4th Estate an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
Format: | Paperback |
Pagination: | 341 pages |
Genres: |
Memoirs Autobiography: writers Social and cultural history Nostalgia: general True stories: general Literature: history and criticism |