The Twinkling Of An Eye: My Life as an Englishman

The Twinkling Of An Eye: My Life as an Englishman

by Brian W . Aldiss (Author)

Synopsis

THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE charts the life of writer Brian Aldiss from his first memories to his current status as cult writer and distinguished writer, both of general and science fiction. Born in 1925, Aldiss grew up in the Norfolk town of Dereham when his grandfather owned a huge old-fashioned department store; Brian attended several minor public schools (and has an affair with the matron at one) and when he leaves it is 1944. He is sent to India, then Burma where he joins the Forgotten Army. Returning to England he works in a bookshop, becomes a reviewer then a columnist, and the columns are turned into his first book. Fame through writing brings run-ins with Hollywood and psychoanalysis. Aldiss' memoir is as absorbing as admirers of his fiction would expect. A writer's life - but what a writer and what a life.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 496
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Sphere
Published: 04 Nov 1999

ISBN 10: 0751528714
ISBN 13: 9780751528718

Media Reviews
'Astonishingly prolific and surprisingly humane and solid' - OBSERVER 'Brian Aldiss is one of the most influential - and one of the best - SF writers Britain has ever produced' - Iain Banks 'Autobiography is about the sorting out of those moments which gave one identity. For Brian Aldiss, distinguished science-fiction writer and all-round literary gent, these are a disparate Lot--the lost paradise of his grandfather's Norfolk haberdashery store, the excitement and terror of the Army's triumphant thrust through Burma, the intermittent bliss of his second marriage, the mid-life crisis of depressive illness through which he came to new joy. Books are important too--the books that educated him, his early manhood as a bookseller, the books the writing of which was a principal delight and a source of personal freedom. This is partly the story of the making of a writer and of a writer's life; it is also about a life lived in lose contact with both ideas and the senses. Sequential time is no major part of his approach. Some sections of the book are brief summaries, and others rehashes, of things he has said before, but which are crucial to him. Aldiss tells us how things felt to a middle-class Englishman in the 20th century--love, bereavement, travel, war, psychoanalysis, and the discovery of Pluto; if not a great book, it will remain a perennially attractive one.' - Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW
Author Bio
Born in Norfolk, Brian Aldiss served in the Army in the Far East during World War II and has established an enviable reputation as one of Britain's most versatile writers. His novels THE HAND-REARED BOY and A SOLDIER ERECT were both international bestsellers and his successes include the critically-acclaimed and bestselling HELLICONIA Trilogy.