A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
From one of our greatest living writers, comes a remarkable memoir of a forgotten England.
'The war went. We sang in the playground, "Bikini lagoon, an atom bombâs boom, and two big explosions." Davidâs father came back from Burma and didnât eat rice. Twiggy taught by reciting âThe Pied Piper of Hamelinâ, âThe Charge of the Light Brigadeâ and the thirteen times table. Twiggy was fat and short and he shouted, and his neck was as wide as his head. He was a bully, though he didnât take any notice of me.â
In Where Shall We Run To?, Alan Garner remembers his early childhood in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge: life at the village school as âa sissy and a mardy-arse'; pushing his friend Harold into a clump of nettles to test the truth of dock leaves; his father joining the army to guard the family against Hitler; the coming of the Yanks, with their comics and sweets and chewing gum. From one of our greatest living writers, it is a remarkable and evocative memoir of a vanished England.
