LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014
‘Nothing wilfully invented. Memory invents unbidden.’
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, suicides. Death went dogging everywhere. Salisbury, where he was brought up, had two industries: God and the Cold War, both of which provided a cast of adults for the child to scrutinise – desiccated God-botherers on the one hand, gung-ho chemical warriors on the other. The title is grossly inaccurate. This book is, rather, a portrait of a disappeared provincial England, a time and place unpeeled with gruesome relish.
- ISBN13 9781857028492
- Publish Date 8 May 2014
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 December 2015
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint 4th Estate
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 352
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk