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Fragmented: Narratives of London Life
Synopsis
These stories chart my journey from squatter and radical in Seventies London to bohemian but stable middle age as husband and father. Fragmented is a response to historical events and to the changes that have taken place in London during the last thirty-five years. This is not in any sense a misery memoir although it is autobiographical in impulse. There are many humorous stories. A number of these pieces have been published in anthologies and magazines. Many are set in Hackney where I live. The length of the collection is 43,000 words.
These are some of the topics I investigate: personal identity, racial diversity, captured moments in the flux of the city, celebrations of the outsider, London characters and places, the fear of oblivion, childhood. The longer pieces include stories about squatting in Hornsey Rise (the largest squat in Europe at the time). There is a journalistic piece about Ronan Bennett's Conspiracy to Cause Explosions Trial at the Old Bailey in 1979. I was a defence witness. (I saw the arrest. None of the defendants has ever written about the trial.) There is also a short confessional essay about a lie I told to Alan Ross, who is now dead, and was for many years editor of The London Magazine (this has been published).
Fragmented could also make a radio series as the stories offer a commentary on recent times from my own offbeat perspective. They could also become a 'London Slot' in a newspaper.
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