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Author Holloway, John, 1920-1999.

Title A London childhood / With an introduction by C.P. Snow.

Publication Info. New York, Scribner [1968]

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Location Call No. Status
 Manchester, Main Library - Non Fiction  828.9 HOLLOWAY    Check Shelf
Edition [1st American ed.].
Description xiii, 127 pages 22 cm
Summary "With impressive yet understated eloquence, the distinguished English poet and critic John Holloway recreates in extraordinarily evocative detail his life in a working class London suburb up to the age of nine. This autobiographical gem, covering the years 1920-1929, is a highly personal record, illuminating an era which, though still not so distant in time, was obliterated by the Great Depression and World War II. 'His imagination is concrete,' says Lord [C.P.] Snow [in the introduction]. 'You can smell and feel that house in suburban London: but also he makes it more real, not less, by letting his intellect play around it. We begin to learn just how and why the Holloways were like their neighbours, and how they were different. It is the same hard intelligence, working together with his poet's eye, that gives the book its obstinate individuality. This is not a bit like other reminiscences. You accept--and it is one of the best definitions of a work of art--that everything happened, including the boy himself, exactly thus, and could not have been otherwise.' Holloway, like Lord Snow, later escaped the confines--intellectual, social, and economic--of his background. But, as this book makes so memorably clear, his legacy was a rich one."--Jacket.
Contents A house -- A large-hearted boy -- Ill, cold and warm -- Some shops and some callers -- We too could polish flints -- Toy soldiers and others -- The monstrous regiment of women -- Going into details -- Up the garden path -- To the south.
Subject Holloway, John, 1920-1999 -- Childhood and youth.
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography.
Added Author Snow, C. P. (Charles Percy), 1905-1980, author of introduction.
Other Form: Online version: Holloway, John, 1920- London childhood. [1st American ed.]. New York, Scribner [1968] (OCoLC)610448312
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