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The Co-Op's Got Bananas

A Memoir of Growing Up in the Post-War North

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About this listen

 A poignant and very personal childhood memoir of growing up in Cumbria during the Second World War and into the 1950s, from columnist Hunter Davies

Despite the struggle to make ends meet during the tough years of warfare in the 1940s and rationing persisting until the early 1950s, life could still be sweet. Especially if you were a young boy, playing football with your pals, saving up to go to the movies at the weekend, and being captivated by the latest escapade of Dick Barton on the radio.

Chocolate might be scarce, and bananas would be a pipe dream, but you could still have fun. In an excellent social memoir from one of the UK's premier columnists over the past five decades, Hunter Davies captures this period beautifully. His memoir of growing up in post-war North of England from 1945 onwards, amid the immense damage wrought by the Second World War, and the dreariness of life on rationing, very little luxuries and an archaic educational system, should be one that will resonate with thousands of readers across Britain.

In the same vein as Robert Douglas's Night Song of the Last Tram and Alan Johnson's This Boy, Hunter's memories of a hard life laced with glorious moments of colour and emotion will certainly strike a vein with his generation.©2017 Hunter Davies (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio UK Europe Memoir War United Kingdom
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Bounces along at a good pace and great insights into a tough, but loving early life. His progress to Fleet Street is always produced with typical Hunter humour and the actual time spent in Fleet Street gives a vivid documentary of what it was like at that time. I really enjoyed it and looking forward to the follow up which I will now listen to again!

Classical Hunter

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Full of interesting detail about life in the thirties to the start of the sixties.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

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An enjoyable listen as it brought back memories for me. Good narration and we'll paced account. I was tempted to get the sequel but instead have bought the Beatles biography by this author.

Easy Listening.

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Very listenable and thoroughly enjoyable! Waiting for the post 1960 sequel. 10 out of 10.

evocative

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I learned a lot about 50s Carlisle which is one of my later life places. I enjoyed this very much but I am not sure someone with no knowledge of the far north west of England would get much from it.

Enjoyable for a 50s born person

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