Sunnyside Down

Everyone knows about Britain in the 1950s, a stuffy old place where there was only one television channel, where 'Uncle Mac' played records on the wireless for children every Saturday morning, where most people really did go to church on Sunday. Growing up in a small Cheshire village during this monochrome decade, Ken Blakemore's experiences were rather more surreal. His recreation of these days reveals the alarmingly eccentric characters that peopled his world, and the peculiar goings-on that enlivened everyday life. In what is more a biography of a decade than an autobiography, the author's life is just a background narrative thread running through the book, while each chapter focuses on a theme - school, food, radio and TV, and transport, for example. Sunnyside Down paints a gently humorous picture of growing up in the 1950s that will appeal to anyone who was there, and also to a younger audience.