Faber & Faber

Still Life: Richard Cobb

• £13.00 £11.70 (Paperback)
• Add to basket

Synopsis:

Still Life: Sketches from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood (the sub-title is important) was first published in 1984 and won the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Literary Biography. It is a classic among middle-class memoirs. In twenty-one short chapters the town is vividly anatomized. And so are its residents: meet Dr Ranking and, best of all, meet the Limbury-Buses living a life of contented ossification.

'Cobb remembers, and that, as well as his redeeming freedom from all conventional standards of dignity and relevance, is what makes this offbeat, capricious book a rare treasure.' John Carey, Sunday Times

'A remarkable feat of making purest autobiography, part of a general, social history ... Cobb has broken one of the strangest silences in English social commentary; on the missing history of the English bourgeoisie.' Michael Neve, Times Literary Supplement

Tags:

Categorised as:

Non-fiction

Sub-categories:

Biography & Memoir

Places:

Tunbridge Wells

Genres & Themes:

Childhood; Class; Faber Finds; Society

Awards & Prizes:

J.R. Ackerley Prize for Literary Biography - Winner 1984; J.R. Ackerley Prize for Literary Biography - Winner