Keeping Mum

by Brian Thompson

Book by Brian Thompson

Genres: Nonfiction, History, World War II, Biography

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

He read English at Cambridge. Since 1973 he has written for a living as a radio and television playwright and a documentary film maker. He is also the author of several acclaimed biographies: A Monkey Amongst Crocodiles, Imperial Vanities and The Nightmare of a Victorian Bestseller.

Reviews

[Marc Maitland]

I am not sure that this is the easiest book to read that I have ever opened – there is something curiously disjointed about the way this particular author writes. It’s not that the tale he tell is not of great interest and charm – Cambridge, childhood, wartime London - all the things which interest me most, but something about his style of writing that makes it particularly difficult to read. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes there just seem to sequences of sentences – each of importance in its own right and self-contained, but seemingly disjointed from each of its neighbours up and down the page.



There is something else very strange about this childhood autobiography: the author has a strange dysfunctional relationship with both of his parents, for widely different reasons. It is perhaps for this reason that his account seems to lack the charm and affection that I would have expected it to have. Clearly, he had an unusual childhood, a mother who seemed to care little and know even less about her son, and a father who was away from home just as much after the war as during it when he was serving in the R.A.F., and despite having pulled himself up into being a “gentleman” with his commission in the R.A.F., his first demand for his son when he obtained 10 O-Levels at grammar school (one of only 3 who gained that distinction that year) was to arrange a job for him as a Post Office Telegram delivery boy!



An English version of Bill Bryson’s (contemporaneous) “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” this most certainly is not. Whilst Mr. Bryson painted a loving picture of 1950s small-town America, and a charmed world lost, Mr. Thompson’s version is of a post-war austerity Britain, which was best forgotten as quickly as possible. I am still fascinated by that period, however, and even in Britain that austere ration-driven period can have charm, as indeed has been written by Pip Granger in “Up West” (notwithstanding her own dysfunctional childhood).



This book is still good reading for anyone interested in postwar Britain, and childhood in a more innocent age.

[Bookguide · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the quotations on the back cover of this book says the "this book is evidence of children's capacity not only to survive and thrive, but also to look back and laugh." So I was expecting revelations of major deprivation and child abuse. Instead, I find a tale which could be told of many children who were brought up during WWII. Admittedly, his mother was not the most devoted of mothers, but there must have been many who were too busy with war work or just the business of living their lives in difficult times, to spend much time with their children. The concept of "helicopter parents" had not yet been invented; just read an Enid Blyton book to discover how much freedom children had in those days. It does not seem unusual to me that Brian was left to his own devices and expected to fend for himself most of the time. The fact that he doesn't seem to have bonded with other children was largely of his own making, not of his parents', as he was probably too intellectual for the locals, rather a loner. Of course, his father did go off to war voluntarily, and after the war did not return to the family home, visiting only at weekends, and was hyper-critical when present, so that it was a relief when he left. That this should cause a child trauma seems unlikely; after all, many fathers never returned from the war, and families with no father must have been common. In fact, Brian was lucky to have spent time with either of his parents during the war, as so many children were evacuated to stay with strangers far away from anybody they knew.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the family in London and the shop in Lambeth. It evokes memories of hardware stores I visited as a child, which even then were anachronistic. Thompson seems to have much happier memories of his grandparents than his parents, but that is a common experience, clouded by nostalgia. On the whole, I found this an unremarkable memoir. I can imagine the author telling these anecdotes at dinner parties, and people encouraging him to write a book about it. Although the story is worth telling, it probably doesn't bear publishing; as a personal blog and record of the times, it is valuable, but the story is too ordinary to make it an interesting read. This is a shame, as Brian Thompson seems to be an eloquent and interesting man himself, as this YouTube film shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP6Mrm...

[Kimberley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love a good 'coming of age' story but this wasn't nearly as interesting and memorable as others I've read. It held my interest but it wasn't great.

[Linda Price-Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autobiography - a quick read (today) for my book club of what turns out to be a social history of growing up in London (and Cambridge) during and just after WW2. Reminiscent of my parents tales of this era in London and Wales; adding further dimension and colour to the stories I grew up with. Felt highly pleased when Brian passed 10 o'levels and went to grammar school escaping the low expectations of his dysfunctional family, good for you Brian!

[Darla Ebert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has a distinctively rare style. He writes well, approaching his subject from so many different avenues at once. I was adhered to the book, even though the subject matter is painful to read. I began reading it for the time period and the prospect of a story about lifting oneself from poverty and degradation. There is much more to the tale.

[Angie · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really strangely written book that doesn't seem to flow at all. Bits of it are interesting but the writer constantly digresses. Feels like it was written for himself rather than thinking of his audience.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite difficult to read account of an interesting, sometimes saddening but ultimately truly heart-warming childhood.
Makes the reader reflect on the beauty of being a child.

[Vivien · Rating 3 out of 5]

This man had TERRIBLE parents! Some bits were very funny but overall rather sad.

[Pauline Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a charming, funny and readable story of a very eccentric wartime childhood. Given that the book was written in old age, one has to wonder how much was actual memory and how much was liberal use of the imagination to fill in the gaps, but it was nevertheless entirely believable.

It is interesting that the author is a beneficiary of the much maligned eleven-plus exam, which dragged innumerable children from homes uninterested in education and threw them into a grammar school, and thence to university and comfortable middle-class jobs. Without such a system, the author would undoubtedly have remained in his childhood environment and we would not have been able to read his entertaining history.

[Chris Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the book that I thought it would be but it was entertaining nevertheless. The portraits of Brian's cockney paternal grandparents and his uncle's family are the most lovingly drawn. Staying with them was clearly a necessary respite from a terrible life with his wildly dysfunctional parents who for much of the time were not together. But the book ends with Brian having passed his O levels (all 10 of them) and his headmaster persuading his father to let him continue with higher education rather than work as a telegram boy in the postal service. It does not relate what happens to his parents, particularly his depressed and paranoid mother, in their later years. In this way Brian has indeed "Kept Mum".