'Joins the very front rank of memoirs of post-war Britain' David Kynaston
'Fascinating social history' Clare Chambers
'Light paints a fantastically vivid picture of the era' Sunday Times
Alison Light conjures her girlhood growing up in 1950s Portsmouth, a blitzed city with its collective memory of war. Drawing on the souvenirs of her childhood - from her doll's house to her teenage diaries, her comics and schoolbooks - she uses her own story to tell a richly textured social history of post-war England: its popular culture and music, its language and humour.
Lyrical and politically astute, in Red, Red Robin one of our most compelling writers evokes a child's-eye view of the past through the lens of her adult reflections, querying too how we document that past and the nature of memory itself.
