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So Spirited a Town: Visions and Versions of Liverpool
In this highly personal encounter with his native city, renowned biographer Nicholas Murray blends literary descriptions of Liverpool across the centuries with memories of his own 1960s Liverpool childhood in order to create an original and highly nuanced portrait of the character of this remarkable city. The result is a rich mosaic of description and experience built from a range of literary sources: Swift, Defoe, Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Woolf, and Orwell, as well as quirky eighteenth- and nineteenth-century guide books, songs, poems, reminiscences, sermons, novels, histories, travelogues, autobiographies, essays, official reports, journalism, and jokes. So Spirited a Town is a book about how Liverpool has been seen through the eyes of others, but at the same time it is also a personal and moving record of growing up Liverpudlian in the mid-twentieth century: exploring the light-hearted meaning of coming of age “Scouse” while never forgetting that De Quincey’s “many-languaged town” is a cosmopolitan, multiracial seaport with an often tough history of poverty, industrial strife, migration, and, above all, humor.
256 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2008
4 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Murray
19 books8 followersNicholas Murray is an English biographer, poet and journalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichola...
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichola...
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 7, 2011
This appeared to coincide with Liverpool's Capital of Culture Status in 2008.
The negatives first. Murray hasn't lived in the city since the 70s, and his claims to be a 'scouser' are dubious since Waterloo where he was brought up and which he describes as a northern suburb of the city is not in Liverpool. To be fair, it's as near as makes no difference, and his childhood memories of the river and the docks ring true. More serious is his irritating interjections to proclaim himself a son of the city (little asides to having a 'bevy' for example). Son of a headmaster, his filtering of the world is very much of the middle class Liverpudlian variety - that is, a sort of implicit weakly sentimental museuming of the place. I found atrocious his claim that after the recent massive influx of capital to build a gleaming shopping centre, skyscrapers, expensive hotels and apartments that Liverpool has overcome its 'difficulties' and is on the rise, hence the title of the book and the accompanying picture of Jacob Epstein's Spirit of Liverpool Resurgent which is located at the main portal of the former Lewis's department store. Former, because it is awaiting transformation of its derelict shell into expensive shops, an hotel and apartments. No. Liverpool behind the political and mainstream claims is made of thousands of citizens awaiting any sign of resurgence.
Positively, the book's a great collection of resources. It is more than prepared to look at the city's historical problems of injustice, poverty and immense suffering, and locate these in the mainstream discourses of the fabulously wealthy mercantile classes. Murray provides many literary references of those who passed through or stayed in Liverpool. He includes the writings of nearly forgotten working class writers, and offers a (bare) political outline of emergent socialism. What is frustrating and puzzling is that the book provides no index, but there is a good bibliography. It's a reasonable 'journalistic' read.
The negatives first. Murray hasn't lived in the city since the 70s, and his claims to be a 'scouser' are dubious since Waterloo where he was brought up and which he describes as a northern suburb of the city is not in Liverpool. To be fair, it's as near as makes no difference, and his childhood memories of the river and the docks ring true. More serious is his irritating interjections to proclaim himself a son of the city (little asides to having a 'bevy' for example). Son of a headmaster, his filtering of the world is very much of the middle class Liverpudlian variety - that is, a sort of implicit weakly sentimental museuming of the place. I found atrocious his claim that after the recent massive influx of capital to build a gleaming shopping centre, skyscrapers, expensive hotels and apartments that Liverpool has overcome its 'difficulties' and is on the rise, hence the title of the book and the accompanying picture of Jacob Epstein's Spirit of Liverpool Resurgent which is located at the main portal of the former Lewis's department store. Former, because it is awaiting transformation of its derelict shell into expensive shops, an hotel and apartments. No. Liverpool behind the political and mainstream claims is made of thousands of citizens awaiting any sign of resurgence.
Positively, the book's a great collection of resources. It is more than prepared to look at the city's historical problems of injustice, poverty and immense suffering, and locate these in the mainstream discourses of the fabulously wealthy mercantile classes. Murray provides many literary references of those who passed through or stayed in Liverpool. He includes the writings of nearly forgotten working class writers, and offers a (bare) political outline of emergent socialism. What is frustrating and puzzling is that the book provides no index, but there is a good bibliography. It's a reasonable 'journalistic' read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review