This Old Shirt of Mine: A 1950s Urban Idyll - Softcover

Rawlings, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1420886908 ISBN 13: 9781420886900

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2005

Synopsis

Based upon the author's childhood memories. 'This Old Shirt of Mine' is an evocation of life and times of Jimmy Barton, a London kid of junior school age brought up in Islington's notorious Popham Street "Cottages' during the late 1950s. The street, the bomb ruins and the flats themselves provide a unique backdrop to descriptions of everyday life and to some not entirely fictional anecdotes. The book does not dwell on the seamier side of tenement life but portrays in a gently humorous way the more positive aspects of a vanished working class culture when Britain 'never had it so good!'

About this title

About the Author:

John Rawlings was born in Cornwall Cottages in Islington in 1947 and lived in the same flat with his parents for the next 21 years. He attended Charles Lamb and Highbury County Schools and went on to study architecture. He married Pat, another Islingtonian in 1970. In 1976 their housing situation forced them reluctantly to leave the borough although they still manage to get to the Indian Veg and the Marquess Tavern occasionally. After a relatively short career as a local authority architect he is now retired and lives in Kent with Pat and two grown up daughters. This book grew from notes made twenty years ago about childhood street games. His hobbies are ironing and nostralgia.

About this edition

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1420886908
• ISBN 13: 9781420886900
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224