Review
A richly evocative memoir of a childhood spent on the Isle of Wight in the 1950s. Various vanished worlds are here conjured back to life, not least the seaside sophistication of Britain's once exotic offshore resort. Actually, it is particularly fascinating to learn how much of the Isle of Wight has remained unchanged, how much of the island's key tourist attractions are lodged in a post-war time warp. Ryde Pier, on the evidence of this memoir, has hardly been transformed in the course of half a century. But the genteel middle-class world of Babycham ('the first drink a woman could order in a bar without feeling like a tart or a crone') has definitely had its day. You expect a book by Norman to be well written, but the humour in Babycham Night is a revelation.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Philip Norman's family considered themselves genteel yet somehow became involved in the opportunistic world of seaside trade on the Isle of Wight. With masterly skill, Norman recreates his upbringing among this gallery of social misfits-his handsome but unstable father Clive, once a dashing RAF officer, now a reluctant showman at the end of Ryde Pier, his pub-owning Uncle Phil, who dresses as a woman every New Year's Eve, and his irresistible Grandma Norman who presides over her rock kiosk and rules the troubled family like a Mafia don.
