Book 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. The year is 1953. While
Britain celebrates the coronation, ten-year-old Philip watches disaster
approach in his father's obsession with Joan, the Bronze Medal roller
skating champion. Finally, he concocts a stratagem to win his parents'
attention which explodes spectacularly in his face . . . Funny and
poignant, Babycham Night evokes the joys and heartache of childhood, and
takes the reader on a nostalgic trip back to a lost era, when the Isle
of Wight was an exotic holiday location and Babycham the height of
sophistication. 'Spellbinding memoir of a Fifties childhood by one of
Britain's most stylish writers' Daily Mail 'Beautifully written . . . so
vivid you can taste the teacakes' Time Out 'So richly vivid are his
general recollections that practically every passing reference draws us
deeper into a childhood world' Financial Times
Philip Norman is the author of Shout!, a biography of the
Beatles, as well as The Stones on the Rolling Stones and
definitive lives of Elton John and Buddy Holly. He writes regularly
for the Sunday Times.
