Great Holiday Moments

The 1970s and early 1980s were filled with high-octane family holiday fun, as this short movie clip shows. As ever, no expense has been spared in the shooting and editing of this film.

Adapted from the illustration on p.209 of Small Town England (the bit just after the chapter on 50cc motorbikes).

Language Lessons from 1978

This highly educational short film was sort-of adapted from one of the chapters in Small Town England - set in France in 1978 - which in turn was inspired by the crazy genius of Le Français d'Aujourd 'hui, the legendary text that introduced French to a generation of 70s schoolkids (and helped to get me to a D in 'O' Level French).

(original Bertillon pics © F Chalaud)

Maier, Vogts, Schwarzenbeck, Beckenbauer, Breitner, Bonhof, Hoeness, Overath, Grabowski, Müller, Hölzenbein

Maier, Vogts, Schwarzenbeck, Beckenbauer, Breitner, Bonhof, Hoeness, Overath, Grabowski, Müller, Hölzenbein

Why is it that I can remember the West German team in the 1974 World Cup Final - even though I only watched the last fifteen or twenty minutes because we were all too nervous and so instead played the final outside on the front field and in this case Scotland had got to the final to play Holland so there would be no moral losers in this parallel universe. And when we scored a goal we would do an impression of the player who scored, so Denis Law would stop to chat about his time in Italy with Turin and hanging out with Enzo Bearzot, or Peter Lorimer would mutter some garbled Yorskhire/Scottish “you knows” when faced with the invisible microphone – yet I can’t remember what happened last year, or last week? Or even yesterday? For instance, what were the names of those people I met at that party? Actually, it wasn’t a party (see, I can’t even remember that properly) it was in the school playground and they were parents of my one of my son’s friends. I instinctively said “party” because this book is probably going to end up in the memoir section of the bookshop and I’m thinking that I might need to make my life more interesting than it actually is.

Stoke Newington Literary Festival

I'm doing a spot at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival next month, talking about one of my favourite subjects...


Stoke Newington Literary Festival

3:00 What’s so great about the Great British Pub? Pete Brown, Paul Ewen and Tim Bradford
The White Hart
£4 (with free beer)

Beer Writer of the Year Pete Brown hosts an event in his local, The White Hart, getting the beers in and talking to one-man ‘Campaign for Surreal Ale’ Paul Ewen, and local writer and chronicler of small town England Tim Bradford, about what makes the pub such a unique and enduring cornerstone of British culture.

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Hope some of you can make it. The other speakers look really intresting and I would probably have been going anyway. Elsewhere there are some really good authors - see http://www.stokenewingtonliteraryfestival.com/