The Grass Arena: An Autobiography

by John Healy

Winner of the J.R.Ackerley prize for "The Best Literary Autobiography of 1988", this is the true story of John Healy. Born of poor Irish parents in London, he succumbed to alcoholism and lived as a vagrant alcoholic until he learns to play chess in prison. Then he becomes a tournament champion.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Memoir, Irish Literature, Chess, Biography Memoir

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Not a word wasted. I read it in two days. I will keep this as a talisman to ward off sentimentality and gush. To start at the end of it, I will add this book as a resource to keep away from me, “…middle-class men and women, clean and fresh, whom it didn’t seem possible life had touched, discussing in posh, educated voices the hardships that had been handed to them until, on the point of suicide, they had found…” X,Y,Z: whatever self-indulgent claptrap filled in for them the life that was missing.
Healy, punchbag for a violent, vicious Catholic father, tempered by a hard environment, further brutalised in the army, and soon for fifteen years a member of that ‘vagrant society’ (his words) that is the city within the city of London. Alcoholics will love you if you have a bottle and kill you if you will not share it. This is a tremendously violent world, bleak beyond respectable imaginings, a world that is kept hidden largely by the routinely violent institutions of court, prison, healthcare. It is not the individuals as such, although there are plenty of psycopaths within and without the arena just as there are some gems (a probation officer, one who helped turn his life around) it is more a structural divide: “It just is”. Very funny at times, very warm too. Human, at the individual level, this Healy is a man worth the time in knowing. Not just for gawkish or voyeuristic reasons, not to admire or detest, but to see ourselves in. There is a good Afterword by Colin McCabe which compares human behaviour in the Grass Arena with that in the (financial) city: both societies struggle for power, the first is more honest and stripped down to basics stripped of their sartorial sheen of respectability.
It’s a book about one person too who could be any or many of us, struggling to communicate. Common ground, park, grass arena, community, society. Healy, brought late to sobriety struggling and feeling unreal outside in the healthy happy laughing world of the confident. To get there, “I only had my aggression to relate with. If I couldn’t use that, I couldn’t communicate.” Think about it. “I only had my aggression to relate with.”
And driving it all, the Tension, the physical almost twin of himself that clawed into his neck and shoulders, the dreadful anxiety and fear. Fear is a main part of the lexicon in other ways: “ … he who can produce the most fear gets the most drink for nothing. Everyone and everything is full of tension. There are no tomorrows; tomorrows can’t be relied on to come in this vagrant society. Nothing can be taken for granted. Each day you have to prove yourself anew in toughness or lack of it, in stealing, fighting, begging and drinking.”
Healy never quite lost everything. He never went mad completely. That made it worse in some ways. “Trying to hold onto a bit of sanity can make you vulnerable in lots of ways.” That he did hold on leaves us with a rarely powerful testimony.
The consistency in the unadorned writing, cut to the bone, is parallel with the man who is the body who is the feelings and one of us, but ‘authentic’, so when he does, rarely do a summing up or overview it rings true: “And I’m just drinking and smoking, doing my little bit of nick. It seems such an idle boast. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of it. It just is.” (this against a procession of the much more broken than him). Think about it: “It just is”.
There is a lot to be dug over for the nature of addiction, and McCabe does, it is pretty interesting. But Healy just stops, Just like that. No fuss. He found something else, another addiction without harmful side effects and which brought him money and prizes and respect. Find out what it was yourself. But he saw through that, saw it as helpful for a while, then dropped it. He fell in love, it nearly came right, but then he never saw her. Utopia never came. It never does. Life just is.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think William Burroughs's Naked Lunch (5 stars) and then add chess as the turning point of the story. I am not an alcoholic. Neither am I a drug user, vagrant nor grew up in a dysfunctional family with abusive father. I have not been into a sport but I box only as part of regular physical fitness. My father and my two older brothers are good chess players. When I was a young boy, there was a chess tournament in our hometown and my eldest brother got the first prize while the second got the second place. I tried playing it but I just could not think prior to moving my piece. This part in Healy's narration did not come to me:

"After we'd been playing for around two weeks, something clicked in my chess mind and I started to think before making a move, instead of making a move and then thinking."

Healy was 30 when he started playing chess. I am now 52 so even if I anticipate my opponent's move, I don't think I will be a great chess player. Healy even says: "Talent and youth - that's what's needed for success at chess; with the emphasis on youth."

So that's it. I and this book has nothing in common and it could neither be an escapist book for me. Towards the end, when Healy was in India, I even thought that he would be like Elizabeth Gilbert in her very popular (and I don't know why) Eat, Pray, Love (1 star). Good that Healy did not go to Italy and Indonesia. Otherwise, I would not have given this a 4-star rating that in Goodreads means "I really like it!"

So, why did I like this book? The writing: it felt sincere. It is devoid of difficult words and literary style that sometimes are used by authors only to impress. The telling is straightforward and the short sentences felt urgent and you can't stop reading while wondering if there is really that "grass arena" in the seedy part of London where guys with no bottles of booze can get killed (or those who don't share bottles can get killed too).

In summary, it is a self-confession of an alcoholic in London. Then he discovers chess and it brings him back to sanity.

Thank you to Whitaker for swapping this book with my "Noli Me Tangere". My eldest brother, Joselito and our common friend Emir Never (both of them are good chess players as well as bookworms) are patiently waiting for me to finish this book so they can borrow. Haha. My brother says that this is a rare book and they've been looking for this book since many months ago. Only to find out that I have it in my to-be-read folder.

A must read for all chess players and readers.

[Fred Forbes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two areas of interest for me - alcoholism since I have lost family members to the disease, uncle and granddaughter and because my father was an active AA member for 33 years, and chess since it is a game I thoroughly enjoy. Chess shows up later in the story as a possible means of deliverance from the throes of the drink.

While I am no fan of profanity, pretty tough to report on a drunk living rough without it. At times the British slang can be confusing (nick meaning to steal as well as being arrested, for example). Unless one has experienced the addiction, it is very hard to understand how one can put themselves through the physical abuse and harm of a drunken lifestyle. Certainly not something one would want to experience - repeated arrests, jailings, assaults,injuries, health issues, etc. To say nothing of needing to beg or steal for funds to drink and the social ostracization.

Interesting story, if a bit repetitive with interesting thoughts regarding the role of chess and meditation. According to sources online he is still sober although once he realized he would not make it to grandmaster he put his chess days behind him.

[Seraphina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished Modern Classics the Grass Arena: An Autobiography yesterday and it was brilliant. A gritty account of life as a homeless alcoholic in inner city London. Healy doesn't hold back telling his life story of 15 years of homelessness and life with fellow alcoholics and the carnage caused in order to get the next drink. He is not looking for sympathy, there is no great ethical or moral tale. It is just the sheer truth of the situation which makes this so good.
It is a part of life I have certainly walked past but never really thought too much about in daily life.
Colin McCabe gives a really good afterword about the book, highly recommended. Healy can describe characters in two sentences and you know exactly the kind of person he means

[Aaron Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

Woke up with a bottle, smashed some cunt, went jail.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

terrifying. Review coming (hopefully...)
OK I’ve changed the 4 stars to 5, mainly because I’ve been sat thinking about this again, and can’t get the voice, its insistence on truth and its brutal depiction of the world of the vagrant alcoholic out of my head. This is one of the milder episodes: ‘We could get no water to mix with it [surgical spirit], so we went in the church and filled a milk bottle out of the holy water font and started slowly to swallow it. But it’s hard to get down first thing in the day – any time for that matter. Bastard stuff. It either makes you dead sleepy and fit for nothing or drives you mad and ready to kill some cunt.’

When I started the book I felt reading non-fiction (which I rarely do) lacked the density at sentence level of fiction. Too many clichés I felt (eg ‘six months flew by’ and ‘we begged, borrowed or stole’). However I was wrong, the prose picked up a momentum and was actually quite beautiful in its pared-to-the bone way. I did have a slight issue with the way women were depicted, on virtually every page an ‘attractive’ woman passes by, with ‘shapely legs’ or ‘good tits’ or something and this did get a bit tiring. But that was just his direct honesty coming out, and really you wouldn’t want anything else. Besides it’s daft complaining about sexism when murder and mayhem are happening all around. The alcoholic is ruthless – anything for a drink; nothing else matters. Take this incident when a fight breaks out amongst his companions and Jock is stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle:

His shirt collar turned crimson.. his throat was bursting with it. It bubbled up into his mouth, nothing could muffle the sound of the blood gurgling out between his fingers.. he’d sort of gone to walk away, gone round in a small circle and then in a stumble changed his mind and began coming back towards us, blowing awful bubbles.’

Healey doesn’t help or even react much, he’s just happy there’s more to drink: I started drinking one of the bottles. Now he was in the road. The cars were swerving and hooting, just missing him whenever he blundered in the wrong direction. It was comical really. Blood splashed and exhausted, stumbling and jerking around, he was saved from toppling over by being bounced from car to car. .. I watched for a while but he seemed to be making no progress at all, so I just got stuck into another bottle… there was so much drink left you couldn’t really believe in death.

The book is stuffed with anecdotes about stealing, drinking, fighting, sexual desire (usually not fulfilled), and is packed with great characters. Healy’s recall is astounding, full of detail. He is a remarkable man, resilient, wiry, aggressive, incapable of dissembling. And an excellent writer.

I remember seeing the film back in the 90s with Mark Rylance as Healy and it had the same raw amorality, its hunger for drink and its disdain for pretensions, I think. It’s a while since I saw it so I’m going to chase it up.

Whitaker in his review has links to articles about what became of Healy after he replaced alcoholism with another addiction – Albailart in his superb review says he’d rather leave it up to the reader to find out what, so I’m following suit.

[Amy Flaherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book that I really came across by chance and its a rare, rough, gritty, carefully told autobiography of a life that is not usually told. Healy was born to Irish parents in London and traveled back and forth across the UK during his young life. His early life was brutal, with a father who was very abusive and who did not provide a solid upbringing for Healy. He was a boxing champion by the time he was 16, was dishonorably discharged from the military and then lived the life of a wino in London. While doing a prison stint, he traded his alcohol for chess and later became a chess champion. He is self-educated which is evident in his writing- the prose is very raw but he is able to express himself in a way that allows one to connect and really understand the life of someone with real demons and who struggles with them throughout his life. The reason this book was recommended to me is that it was recently in the news because penguin picked it up as a modern classic after it being out of print for several years. He had a "row" with his previous publishers and threatened to "chop all your heads off with an axe." You cant make that stuff up:)

[Whitaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's criminal that this book isn't more widely known and read. It's a no bullshit account of his life as an alcoholic vagrant. It's honest and true and what the fucking hell is wrong with this world that only 12 people on GR have read it????

Here're two articles on his life subsequent to the events in this autobiography: "What happened next?", and "Saved by the book.

[Mohammad Efazati · Rating 3 out of 5]

زندگینامه من کم نخوندم ولی اکثرشون واقعا داستانی نداشتند. یعنی زندگی معمولی بود با یه سری چلنج و سختی و یه سری پیام اخلاقی و ...
ولی نویسنده برای این کتاب واقعا یه داستان عجیب داره که حتی تصورشم سخته.

کتاب خیلی منو یاد "در جاده" مینداخت و همین باعث میشد کتاب رو خیلی دوست داشته باشم. پایان بندی کتاب هم برام جالب بود.
مهمترین چیزی که از کتاب دوست نداشتم حجم تکرار دنبال عرق بودن و عرق خوری و مستی بعدش بود. متوجه میشم که کتاب خاطرات یه الکلی بود. ولی تصورم این بود که خاطرات بیشتری به نظرم این وسط اتفاق افتاده که به خاطر این حجم تکرار کمتر بهشون پرداخته شده
از طرفی من هدف این بنده خدا رو نفهمیدم. شاید اصلا خواستن هدف از یه الکلی خیلی پوچ باشه. ولی توی کتاب درجاده میشد گفت هدف آزادی از زندگی روزمره و زندگی ماشینی بود... ولی اینجا من نفهمیدم واقعا هدف این بنده خدا چی بود.
نویسنده آدم احمقی نیست. برعکس نابغه است. کلی به نظر من (خواننده) موقعیت بود که میتونست زندگیش رو بهتر بکنه ولی نکرد. شاید من معتاد بودن رو نمیفهمم. نمیدونم!

حقیقتش این بی هدفی و تکرار اینقدر زیاد شد که میخواستم به کتاب ۲ بدم. ولی ۱/۳ اخر کتاب به نظرم خیلی جالب شد و خیلی از غر هامو کم کرد


اسپویلر
اسپویلر برای زندگینامه خیلی معنی نمیده. این چیزی که میگم رو من قبل از خوندن کتاب فهمیدم. یعنی ویکیپدیای نویسنده رو باز کنی همون اول نوشته
تو یه نقطه از زمان از یه عرق خور قهار... میشه استاد شطرنج و ...
چیز جالب اینه که یه جا با برادرزاده شاه ایران هم شطرنج بازی میکنه و کلی هم ازش تعریف میکنه. :)) جالب بود برام

[Cliff M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw an arts programme with a bunch of London showbiz luvvies singing the praises of a noble-savage type character called John Healy and his ‘wonderful’ autobiography ‘The Grass Arena’. On the one hand I was intrigued, on the other hand I know that London always bigs-up London (boxing and football being good examples of undeserved reputations) so I approached the book with trepidation.

Warning: The life stories told in the book are truly shocking and harrowing. I’m sure it is no spoiler (unless you don’t read publisher blurbs or advertising) to tell you it is about a vagrant alcoholic who eventually turns his life around. The shock is the level of violence that Healey’s fellow street-based drinkers level on one another. Sure, they are begging and stealing from civilians all day every day, but it is for each other that they reserve their worst crimes. And this is where my doubts arise about the nobility of this savage, Healy. Is alcoholism enough of an excuse to be joining in with the horrific beating and maiming (sometimes to death) of the first one to pass out from drinking each day? Though Healey rarely if ever initiates the violence, how credible are his claims that he joined in so as not to stand out and be the next victim (actually, he becomes a victim of these beatings as much as the rest of the them)? No-one can accuse Healy of a surfeit of compassion or empathy, that’s for sure. To be fair, Healy himself says that he was no longer human, during this period of his life. And he blames nobody apart from himself, which is an important thing to say. If anyone expects to find that Healy and his fellow savages are ‘victims of society’ then forget it. These tales occur when there is full employment in the U.K., and any one of them could get a job in ten minutes (no questions asked) at the Labour Exchange. There was also no shortage of housing (some of the drinkers / stealers fighters retained their homes, even though they spent all day on the ‘grass arena’). No, the decisions to drink and sleep rough (for those that did) were life decisions underpinned by alcoholism. Ie the homelessness and joblessness did not come first. They did not drink to blunt the pain of sleeping in the cold, or any other cliches. They drank therefore they were. Sadly, and to my great shame I have some insights into this world and the decision making that goes into it, so I recognised the faulty thinking that helped Healy descend into hell. Alcohol is a terrible mistress. Truly terrible. And the things it makes you do cannot be explained.

Like many beggars, thieves and con-men Healy is a great story-teller. Apparently this book is not a case of a middle class editor turning a pigs ear into a silk purse. Healy really did write it as is. Well done him - just a pity about the subject matter and the life he lived to get it!

Finally, though I hated the depravity of many of the stories, I had to give the book four stars (and if not fours stars, then five). I have to admit that at the end I wanted to know what happened next… (hopefully no more violence!).

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible book. This is an autobiography of a genuinely ex-homeless man. There is no mawkishness here, no sugar-coating, just Healy's raw amoral truth. I don't think I have more sympathy for the homeless - some of their crimes are appalling - but I don't have less sympathy - their lives are more hideous than I had imagined. What I did get is insight, which, looking around the streets of London, is, in this case, a terrifying thing. It's worth noting too that Healy is a very good storyteller and also has a lyrical gift at times.

[e · Rating 5 out of 5]

in my optional review im writing
coo coo ca bloody choo for the fighting

[Philip Magnier · Rating 4 out of 5]

And it's all true. An abusive father, brutality, street beatings from an early age...then drink, some boxing success, but more drink. And a gradual fall over a cliff.

Complete and total alcohol dependency, sleeping anywhere, not washing, violence...though there is the community who share the wine, a bottom-of-the-pile motley crew, friendships of a sort, but craziness and craving, leading to violence, though many can hardly stand up straight, and they rarely eat. And prison sentences.

Years pass.

Then, a lightening flash from the Gods, he is introduced to chess in prison, and now has an obsession to replace drink. Back outside in the World, chess brings normalcy of a sort, some success, he becomes a flavour of the month. But no happiness of any substance.

It's certainly the best description of addiction I've ever read. A great book in its way, I couldn't stop reading it.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came highly recommended. You open the first page and you walk through a door into the mind and life of an alcoholic. His degradation is sickening to read. I really got sick to my stomach.

An alcoholic knows no line they cross them all until there is no where else to go. It is either death or salvation. John Healy had a noxious childhood. Isolated by his mother and abused by his father, he staggered into drug and alcohol abuse to alleviate the pain in his body and soul.

Redemption comes in a strange form, not an easy book to read, gutter language crime jail time. But a must read if you had any doubts as to alcohol being a disease of the body and mind.

[John Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Chess is a jealous lover. Will tolerate no other, especially in the form of too much drink. I gave myself to her completely body and soul and for the first time in my life I began to live without a constant nagging desire for drink. I was like a person who finds God..."

The above quote from John Healy's classic "The Grass Arena" gave me more pause than any other. Not because I can relate as an avid chess player myself, but moreso as I was unsure to what degree I could relate this quote to any aspect of my admittedly short few years on this earth. Had I ever fallen in love with something so quickly and completely that even the need to eat would pass me by like it did during Healy's early infatuation with the game as he details himself.

Yet, to me, this quote seems to accurately sum up Healy's personality throughout his book, whether it be chess, the Countess or, originally, his love of the bottle which all captivated him so deeply and completely he couldn't escape them, and his one track mind with the latter is what led him to the so-called Grass Arena.

Credit must be given to Healy. Undoubtedly, he has lived a difficult life, enduring abuse from his father at a young age, constant abuse from his peers for being an Irish-man in London and, of course, his many years spent struggling with his addiction. Despite all this, there is never even a hint of self-pity anywhere to be found within the 200 or so gripping pages. He is frank about and honest his life. As Healy ages, it is clear to the reader that he is becoming more vulnerable, and concern slowly mounts that the man is going to drink himself to an early age. It was clear to me that Healy understood this himself but never places the blame for this on others, simply accepting his way of life.

The constant revolving door of technicoloured characters on the streets of London makes it a little hard to follow at times, the only downside of the book for me, yet one wonders if this is intentional, giving a deep insight into how Healy must have felt meeting all of these people for the first time.

A unique insight into the life and mind of someone suffering from addiction and on the margins of society, this book is a must read for those that have been so lucky not to have experienced such hardships. It is important that we keep our minds open to the struggles of others especially in an age when it seems we are more divided than ever.

[Zana · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Grass Arena: An Autobiography' is a brutally honest account of John Healy's experiences with addiction and 15 years of living rough in London without state aid.

The story starts with Healy's abusive childhood and follows his descent into homelesness and alcoholism.
He was born into a poor, Irish immigrant family in the slums of North London in 1943.
He was abused by his religious parents for most of his childhood and became an alcoholic early on in life.
The world he found himself living in was bleak and violent, full of repeated arrests, assaults and injuries.
While in prison, Healy discovers chess. He trades his alcohol for chess and later becomes a chess champion.

The author's writing is raw and honest, there's no sugar coating and he never asks for our sympathy.
He's well aware that he's trading one addiction for another, but it's his passion for chess that ends up helping him pull himself together.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not often these days that I come across a book completely unlike anything I’ve read before, but The Grass Arena is just that. John Healy’s gripping and visceral memoir of his life as a street alcoholic in London in the 1960s pulls no punches and immerses the reader in the filth, degradation, violence and crime of a down and out subculture that few of us can begin to imagine. Healy tells us enough about his childhood in a London Irish family with a brutal father and little money to understand how drink became both solace and security, but it’s his vivid description of complete alcohol dependency and life on the streets, told entirely without self-pity, that will stay long in the mind of anyone who reads The Grass Arena, together with the surprising development that leads to a most unlikely route away from the streets.

[Declan L · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like your memoirs gritty then I have some GRIT 4 u (in the form of John Healy living 15 hellish years on the streets due to alcoholism)

Wow well there’s nothing like this that I’ve read or come across. It’s sort of like a blend Ham on Rye by Bukowski or Life of Crime docu series on HBO, really intense and raw af. The pacing never lets up and it’s a real uh buckle up from page 1.

Really appreciate that this exists and we got this story for all its honesty~

[Katie Mcsweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't realise that it was possible for me to not fall in love with the subject of a biography... John Healy I don't idolise or apologise for him. I respect him. An amazing man.
His biography has made me see my city with new eyes. It has made me see the homeless with new eyes, not the soppy, sorrowful middle class consciousness I previously saw them through. I am wondering much more practical things about the "texture of their lives" as Colin MacCabe puts it... how does their community work? Where do they sleep, where can they wash, where do they eat and how can any of that be changed? How did Healy get off the street? How did he manage to turn himself around? Was it really just chess? Some (Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death)see chess as one means of managing the "tension" (Healy's term) caused in an individual who doesn't like or understand normal society. First Healy used drink as a way of relaxing him enough to interact... then he found chess could perform the same function. It's so interesting to think of chess as a crutch or even a vice in anyway comparable to alcoholism. It's fascinating! I want to read this again when I am a few years older and have accrued a bit more life experience. I would universally recommend this.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Perhaps like all all great books, it leaves you permanently altered." Colin MacCabe in the book's Afterword.

A unique insight into the world of the alcoholic vagrant. It's reminiscent of some of Charles Bukowski's work, although - unlike Bukowski - John Healy had no safety net, no rented room, and no employment. He and his fellow vagrants get injured, maimed, die by accident, and get murdered, and all the while their only focus is on their next drink.

That John Healy was able to create the opportunity to write his account is miraculous, that's it's so well written is even more so. Healy's redemption is unexpected and unlikely, and I cannot think of a more unusual and compelling tale.

For most readers the events depicted are from a completely different world. It's extraordinary and well worth entering. You will never look at a group of street drinkers in the same way again.

[Kirsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, what a book, feeling guilty for the one star rating already, but it was such a painful read that the only honest review for me would be 'didn't like it' hence the one star. Having said that, it was so powerful, this one gave me nightmares so couldn't read before bed. I had such difficulty reading about the brutal life that the author lived, a novelised account would have been easier to cope with for sure. I read it for book club and am glad we did it, as my self selection is inevitably based on reading for pleasure, and reading can offer so much more can't it. So, I've learnt a bit about the effects of a violent upbringing, followed by the wino lifestyle including homelessness and jail - ugly, vicious, brutal. It certainly makes me want to support any eradicating homelessness measures around. Good luck you pollies!

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heard this praised to the hilt on Radio 4's A Good Read, looked on here and loads of 5* reviews. However, I found it tedious and repetitive, written by a self-destructive and very unpleasant character who didn't show any remorse for any damage he'd done, and although he may have had some sort of reason for his alcoholism, that doesn't excuse him, and doesn't make it an interesting read. There's only so many drunken binges you can read about without becoming irritated by his behaviour. Not for me, this one.

[Harris Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn’t expecting to have any connections to The Grass Arena.

It was only around page 160 that I realised Healy's grass arena was my, and my childhood friends, den in Euston Square Gardens. One of the stone pavilion’s terraces was then thick with shrubbery but is now a seating area for the pavilion's cappuccino kiosk. It overlooked the grassy area that would undoubtedly have been like an arena for the winos, who are now evicted and unseen from those sipping cappuccinos with biscotti. Back then, we'd sewed regimental shoulder insignia onto our denim bomber jackets, pinned pips to our shoulders (bought from the army surplus shop beneath St Pancras Station forecourt), and lobbed small stones on those below.

Doing a bit of basic math, I reckon we were there at the same time as Healy. How extraordinary.

Harry Roberts! Do you remember him? Healy mentions he was on the run. It was a hot topic, an infamous story, a notorious police killer. I hadn't thought about Harry Roberts for over 50 years. Back then, for the space of a few weeks, nobody talked about anything else; he was in the papers, the news, his mugshot on wanted posters. For a seven-year-old, he was the bogeyman who would come and get me if I didn’t go straight to bed.

Finally, Healy’s fellow wino falls under a train from a platform in the Angel Underground. At the time, I lived at the Angel Islington, when the northbound and southbound platforms of the station were in the same tunnel with a single narrow platform in the middle. Even sober it felt like walking a tightrope.

Nostalgia.

Enough!

I found Healy's early childhood, the time when he went to rural Ireland to visit relatives, and even his army days a good start. Bucolicism and nostalgia met head-on with urban brutality. But during his wino days, Healy's writing is like a stand-up comedian performing his material in rapidly delivered one-liners, and there are a lot of them. They’re mostly unconnected and extremely brief reminiscences. Rather than telling a coherent story, they are a series of similar, pithy anecdotes with the common theme of drinking and violence. New characters arrive with alarming frequency with no introduction. It's like a butterfly frenetically flitting from one anecdote to another without respite to take nectar, or in this case for Healy to take a plaudit. Because, nearly all these anecdotes are interesting but after a sentence or two, we are off onto another one, and another, etc., etc., etc…

Writing in this way Healy offers us cold facts at face value, there's no evaluation or thought behind what's happening. Because there's little introspection and understanding of deeper emotions and issues it appears there's not a lot of humanity to Healy's writing, especially during his wino days. It's left for us to feel aggrieved at the injustice of it all; Healy simply puts the evidence before us. Nearly all the sentences are pared down to the minimum: they’re so punchy, shocking, or glib, that they might stand alone in their own right. Like a series of slogans or a sentence on a book cover that teases a potential buyer. He never sits back, ponders, ruminates, or considers. As such, the speed of the narration is breathless and has a brevity that gets monotonous. Healy dangles short sharp sentences to amuse, shock or disgust as though he might have thought this was all he had to do. This staccato delivery could be effective but comprising most of the book it needed some equal moments of reflection. Since this was his first book it may have been a callowness, but especially at the end when Healy discusses chess and India, it becomes a comfortable, enjoyable read. Comfortable in the sense of the story being well-structured with rounded prose.

I liked the way his addiction to drink left Healy’s life so abruptly, supplanted by chess, a far less dangerous obsession. Also, his visit to India was told with uncharacteristic charm and repose. In these two narratives and his childhood years, the days in Ireland and the army, there are poignant reflections but still never any true depth of thought. A deep psychological analysis is unnecessary, but I wanted to know what was going on in his mind, for he must have often questioned himself and his desolation: his sentiments, his underlying hopes and fears, his frustrations and anger. Not only were there opportunities in these narratives but more so in the grass arena part of the book where it would have added a much-needed texture to the prose, and a varied pace to the writing.

In the end, this is a worthy first book though its intensity, slightly mishandled, doesn't make it a great memoir or strictly speaking a classic. And though there’s an upbeat ending one still senses that Healy carries a sadness with him. It appeared he lost the capacity for making friendships and experiencing love at a young age, especially later on with the inconvenience of his addiction. Chess and writing were possible palliatives to his drunkenness and violence. They gave him the opportunity to maybe feel he was fighting back against his abusive father and allowed him to draw the veil of alcoholism to one side; though one senses he stepped through it with all the limitations he’d always had.

The book begged to be published for as Colin MacCabe says in the after-forward it's a world we knew existed but thought it existed in isolation from us. In a sense, it is a parallel world that nonetheless touches ours briefly through murder, violence, and robbery; and to think we believed it a low-risk sedentary life that would slowly fade towards death.

The greatest benefit Healy gained might have been its cathartic quality. This Penguin Modern Classic republished the first edition that was prematurely pulled from print by the piqued boss of the publishing house. Characteristically Healy had said what he’d thought about him.

I would like to see the film and the documentary 'Barbaric Genius'. It appears his output, and also his private life since The Grass Arena is modest.

[Jonas]

This is an autobiographical account of the authors life as an alcoholic roaming and living on the streets of London (or in prison). His childhood features in a few chapters at the beginning of the book as does the life after addiction in the end, but most of the book is focused on him as an alcoholic.

I don’t quite remember how this book landed on my TBR-list, but I’m glad to have read it. His account is permeated with violence, abuse and betrayal. It was equally fascinating and horrifying to read about a sort of parallel world, which takes place inside our own but is governed by vastly different rules. At times I had to remind myself, that I’m reading an autobiography and not some made-up story – some of his stories seeming so utterly unbelievable. Yet, over time I felt myself slipping in Healy’s head with prison, for example, not seeming particularly undesirable, it just being a place where one spends a few months as if it weren’t something unusual. What stuck out to me as well was the feeling, that any homeless guy in my own city could be Healy as well. The only thing that I’d have wished for was a bit more coherence between the stories and some sort of hint as to how much time passed. Whilst I now know that Healy left this part of his life behind him at around 30, I don’t know how long he's actually been homeless. Still, I see why he chose not to do so, as this probably better reflects the feeling of timelessness at a time when one’s only concern is how to get the next bottle of wine.

As the guy writing the afterword wrote, this book feels like entering another world – and that world just happens to be made up of the same streets we walk down every day. Whilst it won’t be a pleasant trip I do feel like it is a valuable and important one, so do not miss out on this book.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read too many autobiographies.

Jon Healy, born 1943 to Irish immigrants, took to vagrancy, alcholism and crime, almost directly from the time he left home at 14.

This tells his tale in a brutal, unflinching manner. We starts with his childhood beatings from his religious parents, setting a bit of a back story, head through his early boxing years, mainly concentrate on his tramp drinking in the public areas around Euston Station and finish with his salvation through discovering chess and becoming just as addicted.

It's a quick read, written in machine gun style. Events pass quickly and there is no real request for understanding or sympathy - it simply tells the way life is when you are looking only as far as your next drink. Usually wine. Sometimes surgical spirit diluted with toilet water or font water. Jailtime, which is frequent, is simply treated as a break and a chance to get a decent meal. No explanation is given as to why the old life is instantly taken back up.

There's a mad and extensive list of other characters, usually referred to by nickname, that appear/disappear with no warning. The camaraderie of people in the same position is not lost in the transcript, even through the fighting that occurs through such desperate living.

The book also provides a backdrop of London in the Post War years. All bombed out buildings and abandoned cars.

In 40 years time, we will no doubt be reading a similar biography of the Spice Addicts that have seemingly taken the place of London Winos.

[Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gritty and distressing however such great story telling! I thoroughly enjoyed the pace of this book! I can’t believe how much he managed to cram into the pages. He manages to describe such disgusting and sickening events so nonchalantly that I felt myself feeling pretty desensitized by the end (which is harrowing in itself)!

[Jack Lawther · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was found on a bus and given to me to read, a rather fitting inception considering the subject matter. I was going to give this book a longer review, but my phone crashed (perhaps for the best), so I will simply say: this book is brilliant and criminally underrated, go and read it.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A starkly honest memoir. Healy doesn’t hold back in his detailed and direct relating of his life as an alcoholic on the streets of London. A view into a parallel world that otherwise remains invisible to those of us not living in it.

[mrs g houston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as I thought it was going to be,.

[Aaltje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and beautiful, but also very sad. Like a real life London version of Trainspotting.