It was 1962 and my grandfather Edward was moving from Boston to London with everything he owned in one suitcase. But there was a catch: Captain, the family parrot, had spent twenty years in the kitchen back home repeating bad words in four languages. Read more →
My great-grandmother Florence made the best fish cakes in the family. Nobody disputes this. There have been arguments at the dinner table over the last one, at birthdays with thirty people round it. Read more →
London, March 1963. A bus strike brought the city to a halt on a rainy Tuesday. My mother, Vivien, was walking to her job at a printers' in Clerkenwell. She was three streets away when it started to rain in earnest. Read more →
Summer of 1958, before everything. My mother was nine years old. The cottage belonged to her grandparents on her mother's side — a small place near St Ives with pale blue weatherboard and a dog called Bandit who had learned to open doors. Read more →
When we were teenagers, my aunt Helen built a pirate radio station in the big bathroom of the London house. The aerial ran out through the courtyard window. It broadcast two hours a day — music, made-up news, fake recipes — under the name "Radio Spud." Read more →