Forever England: North and South - Hardcover

Based on a British TV series, English novelist Bainbridge's chatty group portrait of six English familiesAthree from the North, three from the SouthAoffers an unvarnished look at how ordinary English folks live, work and plan for the future. Her spin on the North/South dichotomy that still haunts England may come as a revelation to American readers unaware that England has its own cultural Mason-Dixon Line. Northerners, Bainbridge explains, display a grit and belligerence born of hard times and local customs; in contrast, soft-spoken Southerners exhibit a detached complacency, are more affluent and less preoccupied with regional roots. Furthermore, many Northerners feel they've had a raw deal, losing brains, talent and money to London and the South. A long-time Londoner, Bainbridge grew up in Liverpool and exhibits much ambivalence toward the old working communities of the North, especially toward what she perceives as a narrowness of outlook and lack of expectation. Half the book consists of her own nostalgic autobiographical reminiscences, recalling her fervent socialist father and thrifty, apolitical mother, her acting experience, early marriage and exodus from Liverpool. Writing with the gimlet wit and sharp eye familiar to readers of her novels (The Birthday Boys, etc.), Bainbridge gets her subjects to bare their souls as they cope with cramped living quarters, joblessness, mortgages and life's various traumas.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Based on a six-part BBC series that originally aired in Britain in the 1980s, this volume mixes interviews and memoir to explore the lives of three families from the north and three from the south of England at the height of the Thatcher era. Bainbridge visits towns like Hastings, Barnsley, and Bentley, talking to sheep farmers, fishermen, stockbrokers, and the chronically unemployed, all the while drawing on her own experience of growing up in Liverpool after World War II. With acute insight, she explains how the Conservative government helped deepen the divide between north and south, the underprivileged and the privileged. The interviews begin with immediate family and branch out to friends and relatives in wider orbits. It is instructive to travel back a decade and see how the seeds of despair were sownAmines were closed and resources depleted, putting families out of work and onto welfare. Add to this Bainbridge's own wry reminiscences and you have a book well worth the asking price. Recommended for all public libraries.ABarbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.