Clever Girl: Growing Up in the 1950s

by Brian Thompson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.27

  Brian Thompson groped his way to being a grown up. He excelled at school and met a girl - the girl of the title - who recognised his ambition to escape the miserable lives his parents had made for each other. After such a disastrous childhood, with her he set himself the task of discovering the healing waters of pure ordinariness. Brian spent his National Service in the King's African Rifles, fighting a colonial war in Kenya, with the dubious assistance of his platoon sergeant, one Idi Amin. Despite skirmishes with the Mau Mau, his most serious injury was playing football with a biscuit tin on Christmas Day, 1954. 'Thank God we have a navy,' his father sighed when he returned home. He read English at Cambridge in the last days of old-style university education and at the very cusp of the new popular culture ushered in by rock and roll. Suitably confused, and with what his father liked to call the real world lapping at his feet, he did what was considered the right thing. He married the Clever Girl.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.27

  Brian Thompson never had to look very hard for trouble. His unorthodox childhood and his eccentric parents guaranteed that. But when, aged eighteen, Brian left home he was determined to enjoy a life of unstinting ordinariness, taking advantage of a Britain that would 'never have it so good'. National Service led to foreign travel to Kenya, skirmishes with the Mau Mau and a request to fix the results of his platoon sergeant's English exam, one Idi Amin. Even when Brian was safe on English soil he was still confounded in his ambition to lead a quiet life. His limp attempt at University entrance - a single letter on some stolen NAAFI headed paper - led to admittance to Trinity College Cambridge and the niceties of middle class student life. And then there was rock and roll. And girls. Suitably confused, Brian did what was considered to be the right thing. He married the Clever Girl.