In No Man’s Land

‘A man, now, well sure enough, one of those you can forget; but a child is forever.’ Kate Byrne

For No Man’s Land, first published in 1972, Tony Parker persuaded six young unmarried mothers to talk frankly about their lives, their hopes and their problems. As ever Parker didn’t impose himself upon the text: the women speak as and for themselves. As such No Man’s Land is a precious sociological portrait of a Britain in which many believed that motherhood and marriage were subject to an umbilical linkage.

‘Tony Parker is himself unique: Britain’s most expert interviewer, mouthpiece of the inarticulate, and counsel for the defence of whose whom society has shunned or abandoned.’ Anthony Storr, Sunday Times