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london books : don't miss London Born by Sidney Day Read it on the tube rating: 8/10 read it on the Northern line; Day travelled through the exact-same tunnels, while the world above was so utterly alien. The fascinating memoir London Born is the work of 93-year old Sidney Day, as dictated to his granddaughter – he himself never learned to read or write. Day tells of his days as a chancer and petty criminal in the north London of his childhood and young adulthood. It almost beggars belief that the city he describes – where men bet on their pet birds in pubs, ponies and carts fill the streets, bread and dripping is a standard dinner and you know what people do by the hats they wear – is the same city that we live in, and within living memory. To my mind, this book is most directly comparable with works like Cider With Rosie and Larkrise to Candleford, with their tales of growing up in rural poverty in much the same period. Of course, for every parallel, such as the way children were left to roam freely all day, there are just as many differences, owing to the urban setting. The distinct identity of the Londoner comes across very strongly, helped by the language employed. Helen Day has put her grandfather’s idiom straight into the text, which is peppered with “cor blimey”s and “clip round the ear ‘ole”s. I found the section on the Second World War to be particularly refreshing. The war Day tells of is not the mythologised Blitz spirit but one much closer to what my gran (bombed out of the Old Kent Road) describes. Instead people try to subvert the system, get out of dangerous duties and generally look after number one. All in all, this is an absorbing read that should make you look afresh at the city around you. KS |
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