| Author: | Richard Cobb | ISBN: | 9780571252978 |
| Publisher: | Faber & Faber | Publication: | June 4, 2009 |
| Imprint: | Faber & Faber | Language: | English |
| Author: | Richard Cobb |
| ISBN: | 9780571252978 |
| Publisher: | Faber & Faber |
| Publication: | June 4, 2009 |
| Imprint: | Faber & Faber |
| Language: | English |
Still Life: Sketches from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood (the sub-title is important) was first published in 1984. It won the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Literary Biography in that year. It is a classic among middle-class memoirs. In twenty-one short chapters the town is vividly anatomized. So too are its residents: meet Dr Ranking and, best of all, meet the Limbury-Buses living a life of contented ossification.
'Cobb remembers, and that, as well as his redeeming freedom from all conventional standards of dignity and relevance, is what makes this offbeat, capricious book a rare treasure'. John Carey, Sunday Times
'A remarkable feat of making purest autobiography part of a general, social history... Cobb has broken one of the strangest silences in English social commentary; on the missing history of the English bourgeoisie'. Michael Neve, Times Literary Supplement
Still Life: Sketches from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood (the sub-title is important) was first published in 1984. It won the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Literary Biography in that year. It is a classic among middle-class memoirs. In twenty-one short chapters the town is vividly anatomized. So too are its residents: meet Dr Ranking and, best of all, meet the Limbury-Buses living a life of contented ossification.
'Cobb remembers, and that, as well as his redeeming freedom from all conventional standards of dignity and relevance, is what makes this offbeat, capricious book a rare treasure'. John Carey, Sunday Times
'A remarkable feat of making purest autobiography part of a general, social history... Cobb has broken one of the strangest silences in English social commentary; on the missing history of the English bourgeoisie'. Michael Neve, Times Literary Supplement
