Tales of the Suburbs (Audiobook)

From New Addington to New Malden, from Croydon to Crawley, from Torquay to Tunbridge Wells, John Grindrod’s resourcefully assembled collection of very human stories – often inspiriting, occasionally dark, never sentimental – breaks new ground and adds an invaluable dimension to our understanding of modern suburbia.

Grindrod is one of the best chroniclers of British life, his storytelling so subtly revealing, his observations astute and often laugh-out-loud funny. Tales of the Suburbs skilfully manages to be two wonderful things: an essential work of social history and a moving trek through the memories and minutiae of so many vital lives.

The patchwork of captivating stories that make up Tales of the Suburbs show that it was no queer wasteland beyond Britain’s urban centres. Stretching back more than a century, we see how suburban development was entangled with changing understanding and experiences of LGBTQ+ life. And we see too that whilst they might be by-words in convention and conformity, suburbs across the country in fact nurtured and accommodated queer difference. Indeed, it was perhaps the polite indifference and tacit knowledge that allowed it to flourish. Grindrod’s expert storytelling reminds us of the diversity in our midst, and also how age, family, class, race, wealth and poverty matter to the ways queer lives are lived.

[A] fantastically entertaining alternative history of queer life in Britain . . . Tales of the Suburbs is ultimately about what it means to call somewhere home

Captures the peculiarities of suburban life with warmth and wit