The Vanished Landscape by Paul Johnson

The Vanished Landscape by Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson, the celebrated historian, grew up in Tunstall, one of the six towns around Stoke-on-Trent that made up the Potteries'. From an early age he was fascinated by the strange beauty of its volcanic landscape of fiery furnaces belching out heat and smoke. As a child he often accompanied his father - headmaster of the local art school and desperate to find jobs for his students, for this was the Hungry Thirties - to the individual pottery firms and their coal-fired ovens. His adored mother and father are at the heart of this story and his older sisters who, as much as his parents, brought him up. Children made their own amusements to an extent unimaginable today, and his life was extraordinarily free and unsupervised. No door was locked - Poverty was everywhere but so were the Ten Commandments.' These pages recall the joys of going to school on a minor branch-line - the 1930s were the tail-end of the great age of rail in England - and the eccentricities and ferocity of grown-ups in an age before political correctness. The book ends in 1938 as the 11-year-old author queues at the town-hall for a gas mask.

a charming, wistful, gentle account - INDEPENDENT - Peter Stanford

This neat, well turned narrative is thrown together with dexterity and assurance - SPECTATOR

The sketches are charmingly done and give us an idea of what the Potteries must have looked like- SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

His evocation - and deptiction... will move anyone who, like the author, has spent a past happy time in the area of the Potteries. - EVENING STANDARD - Antonia Fraser

Short, neatly written and attractively decorated with some self-penned sketeches. - SUNDAY TIMES - DJ Taylor

... nothing he has done, not even his recent much gentler essays in The Spectator, has prepared one for the charm of of this enchanting memoir of his childhood in the potteries... Every page of this book gives pleasure... - DAILY TELEGRAPH - Allan Massie

a vivid portrait of Thirties life, especially of his adoring mother... His book is a paen to maternal eloquence and domesticity. Lucky him. And lucky her. - THE TIMES - Valerie Grove

a minor classic, a quiet book, a delight. - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - Tom Stoppard

Paul Johnson, who was born in 1928 and educated at Stonyhurst and Magdalen College, Oxford, edited the New Statesman magazine in the 1960s and has written over forty books. A contributor to newspapers all over the world, he lives in London and Somerset.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780297847724
ISBN 10	0297847724
Title	The Vanished Landscape
Author	Paul Johnson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Orion Publishing Co
Year published	2004-10-14
Number of pages	216
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.