Product Description

The author has collected the reminiscences of a variety of people who grew up in Britain during the 1950s, such as Jenni Murray, Maureen Lipman, Edwina Currie and Jon Snow. They reflect on memories such as liberty bodices, jiving and crisp packets with blue paper twists of salt inside.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242743 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From the Author
My book is meant to be fun - no heavy social analysis!
I'm delighted that people have enjoyed this book. It was meant to be fun, to be a celebration of a type of childhood (innocent, free) that has since, alas, mostly vanished. Political correctness does not apply! The book concentrates on white people simply because I am white and my friends are white. We just didn't know any black people in 1950s Britain; why pretend that we did? It's not a crime, surely. We were children, and that was the way society was, then.

Customer Reviews

I never realised everyone was doing exactly the same as ME!
What a nostalgia-fest! Some of the anecdotes I recognised so much that I laughed and cried till I had lock-jaw, face-ache, and almost peed my pants! It was both gloriously happy and unbearably nostalgic all at the same time. And what a realisation - that every other kid was experiencing exactly the same things as me and my brother and my cousins and schoolmates, etc.

The only criticism would be it would have been nice to have had captions or credits to the pictures.

I couldn't put the book down. Being a sporadic reader it normally takes me months or years to get through anything but I couldn't wait to get to the next page to see what exciting memories it might contain.

What came back most was the care-free-ness of being a 50s child, the freedom to go out for hours exploring, walk alone in the woods, ride a bike without a helmet, play in the road with not a car in sight.

And most of all, mum and dad always "being there" at home. A warm safe place to return to. Families seemed to play and stay together in those days.

Oh, happy days.

END.

This took me back exactly to my own childhood. It is very ac
I was so impressed with this book that I have ordered it again to give as a present. It is an exact picture of the 50s in which most of us lived in England. Things certainly changed at the end of the decade and significantly so from the sixties onwards. But here Miss Pressley paints for me the best of periods, one of development in so many ways, the time of my growing-up, a time which I believe has not been bettered for anyone since.

Excellent
A book which transports the reader back to a time when there was so much going on and so much to look forward to. People who grew up in that innocent era recount their childhood memories and the book is also filled with excellent illustrations. It's a must for those who grew up in the 1950's and I would also recommend it to those who weren't there at the time - it gives a fascinating insight into a period in history normally passed over in favour of the 1960's.