Authors Electric

I’ve been reading a number of memoirs recently, thanks to Slightly Foxed Editions, the publishing wing of Slightly Foxed magazine. Mostly this has been a sheer delight. While the writing quality may vary, what doesn’t is the fascinating glimpses of detail of peoples' lives in the past .  To War with Whitaker by Hermione Ranfurly My Grandmothers and I by  Diana Holman Hunt I was going to write ‘ordinary peoples' lives’ but that would hardly fit My Grandmothers and I , Diana Holman Hunt’s hilarious account of being brought up by her two grandmothers, one of whom was almost dangerously eccentric (guess which one). Or Countess Ranfurly’s determination to follow her husband into battle during World War 2 ( To War with Whitaker ). Other volumes in this series don’t have quite the same glamour but provide invaluable accounts of growing up in wartime London, for instance (V S Pritchett’s A Cab at the Door ). Or learning traditional farming, complete with horse-drawn implements such...

Thanks to a clever company called Slightly Foxed , I find myself reading a lot of memoirs nowadays. For those who haven’t yet discovered it, Slightly Foxed brings out a quarterly magazine  of essays about books - fiction, non-fiction, all genres - particularly prized by the contributors. Not recently published ones, no Booker shortlist here, but ones that have stood the test of time and become personal favourites. Reading these articles have not only reminded me of much-loved titles, but got me tracking down others I’d never heard of before.  Slightly Foxed Editions: pleasingly harmonious. (from foxedquarterly.com)  It was a natural progression, then, for Slightly Foxed to start its own imprint, Slightly Foxed Editions, a delightfully produced series of pocket hardback reprints of classic memoirs, unjacketed, each with a different colour binding, so that a whole shelf of them gives a pleasingly harmonious look. I know this because we have two and half shelves full, and ...

Probably due to my advanced age, assembling a memoir, among my  various writing projects, throws me back to a childhood that I remember in a time that now seems more like history than recollection.   Original "Hollywoodland" sign, 1938 I was a pup before television, computers, the internet, social media, the polio vaccine, jet airliners, the cold war, and nuclear weapons.  My boyhood memories blend with what my parents heard intently on our radio - a sleek, deco, maple-panelled, 1930s Philco cabinet in the living room that broadcast soap operas, the evening news, mysteries, variety shows and Franklin Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats."  My memories span from America's post-WW2 rise to free world leadership to its present, self-immolation, from the Great Depression's end and Allied leadership to being led by a self-destructive, traitorous, sociopathic president who commands the American miliary to forget the Constituion, and turn on fellow citizens. UT & fa...

A Late Beginner by Priscilla Napier Perhaps it’s an age thing (nooo, don’t all shout at once) but I find myself increasingly drawn to memoirs these days. This has led me to conclude that anyone enduring an eccentric childhood is duty-bound to write about it, if only to add to the sum of the bizarrest human knowledge and general mirth.  This view doesn’t allow for various other essentials eg the ability to write in a way that actually engages the reader…. But I suppose that is for a publisher to decide. In the case of memoirs I’ve read in the last year or so, I am very glad the publishers did decide, and even gladder for the perspicacity of Slightly Foxed Editions , in rescuing many out of print gems and giving them new life. A Late Beginner by Priscilla Napier, Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels , Hermione Ranfurly's To War With Whitaker  (though to be fair that is a young person’s memoir, not a child’s) and now, Mango and Mimosa by Suzanne St Albans, whose childhood was ar...

What questions do you wish you had asked long-ago loved ones? I don't know how perceptive my questions or illuminating their responses would have been, I would have liked to find out. Having been a journalist for many years, I learned that interviewing is a demanding but unreliable art that requires repetition as well as unabashed perception. Tougher yet if it's of someone close.  I interviewed my paternal grandfather over a week's time when he visited my home in Los Angeles at age 92. I wrote a family memoir based upon that. I wish I had asked him so many more follow-up questions before he flew off to Italy where he passed away several years later.  Nowadays I query my fictional characters to add to their dossier, and still there are unanswered questions. No matter the homework, characters remain as much a mystery as real people. If we're lucky, one way or another, we develop a sense of what's true for a character and what's not. I've always been fond of fa...

The other day, I noticed the words "STEAM PEELED" displayed on a can of tomatoes that I took from the cupboard to make a pasta sauce. I'd probably seen that label or one like it many times before, but this time it triggered a cascade of memories. Canned tomatoes bearing that label would have signified a dream come true for a brief but frenzied period in my life fifty years ago. That's when I came down with tomato fever. For a while there, I was convinced that I was going to get rich overnight, revolutionizing California's multi-billion-dollar ag business and saving the environment in the process.  Tomato fever took me from East to West Coast, from Boston, to California's fertile Central Valley, to Parma, Italy and on to Bejing as part of an international, industrial food processing consortium with a psych-ward nervous breakdown stopover. it's a true story that I still have trouble believing sometimes, an adventure full of sound and fury that netted little ...