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LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014

‘Nothing wilfully invented. Memory invents unbidden.’

The 1950s were not grey. In Jonathan Meades’s detailed, petit-point memoir they are luridly polychromatic. They were peopled by embittered grotesques, bogus majors, vicious spinsters, reckless bohos, pompous boors, suicides. Death went dogging everywhere. Salisbury, where he was brought up, had two industries: God and the Cold War, both of which provided a cast of adults for the child to scrutinise – desiccated God-botherers on the one hand, gung-ho chemical warriors on the other. The title is grossly inaccurate. This book is, rather, a portrait of a disappeared provincial England, a time and place unpeeled with gruesome relish.

Johnathan Meades is a British novellist and writer on food, architecture, and culture, as well as an innovative broadcaster. Perhaps best known for his television appearences on ‘Abroad with Jonathan Meades’ and its sequel series, Meades is also a succesful novellist. His previous books include The Illustrated Atlas of the World's Great Buildings (1980), Filthy English (1984), Architectural Expressions (2001), Incest and Morris Dancing (2002) and The Fowler Family Business (2002).