In this hauntingly powerful book, Kester Aspden pieces together the fractured shards of his former life and tries to make sense of the child he was and the man he became. Kester grew up as a typical lower middle-class boy in Thatcher's Britain: bright, popular at school, slightly shy maybe. Then, one fateful day when he was 17, he held up a local shop with a replica gun. He fled the scene but within hours was arrested. At his trial the judge decided to make an example of him - he was sent for 18 tough months into a correctional facility. After prison Kester moved into a Manchester bedsit, and engaged in low-paid work and regular football hooliganism. Before long, he'd signed up with the National Front and was taking part in meetings and rallies, selling copies of the official NF newspaper, The Flag, and fraternising with the party leadership. Fast forward 20 years. It's 2007 and Kester has written a book - a true story - about a Nigerian vagrant who'd been hounded to death by Leeds policemen in 1969. When researching it he realized that the site of David Oluwale's last beating was yards from the spot where he once sold the The Flag.
Suddenly he realized that he had to make sense of those lost years and reflect on what had become of him since. How could he be the same person as the hooligan who stood on the terraces chanting, 'There ain't no black in the Union Jack. Send the bastards back!'? In Broken English Kester tells his story -- and in doing so subjects the Far Right to the scrutiny they deserve. Broken English is a unique portrait of a young man in crisis and also an expose of a hidden society of sorry, washed-up figures whose politics don't stand up to scrutiny. It is dark, occasionally funny and brilliantly written - and a testament to turning the mistakes of the past into something useful and meaningful for the present.
- ISBN10 0857203800
- ISBN13 9780857203809
- Publish Date 10 April 2014 (first published 1 April 2013)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Simon & Schuster Ltd
- Format Hardcover (UK Trade)
- Pages 256
- Language English