Where Shall We Run To?: A Memoir

Where Shall We Run To?: A Memoir
Alan Garner

From one of our greatest living writers, comes a remarkable memoir of a forgotten England.'The war went. We sang in the playground, "Bikini lagoon, an atom bomb’s boom, and two big explosions." David’s father came back from Burma and didn’t eat rice. Twiggy taught by reciting “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and the thirteen times table. Twiggy was fat and short and he shouted, and his neck was as wide as his head. He was a bully, though he didn’t take any notice of me.’In Where Shall We Run To?, Alan Garner remembers his early childhood in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge: life at the village school as ‘a sissy and a mardy-arse'; pushing his friend Harold into a clump of nettles to test the truth of dock leaves; his father joining the army to guard the family against Hitler; the coming of the Yanks, with their comics and sweets and chewing gum. From one of our greatest living writers, it is a remarkable and evocative memoir of a vanished England.

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Copyright (#u83dde3a7-5574-50ae-96f6-df24cf00d8e3)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © Alan Garner 2018

Cover photograph provided by the author

Design by Jack Smyth

Alan Garner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins..

Source ISBN: 9780008305970

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305994

Version: 2018-09-11

Dedication (#u83dde3a7-5574-50ae-96f6-df24cf00d8e3)

For Tom

Epigraph (#u83dde3a7-5574-50ae-96f6-df24cf00d8e3)

Pancake Tuesday’s a very happy day.

If you don’t give us a holiday we’ll all run away.

Where shall we run to? Down Moss Lane.

Here comes Twiggy with his big fat cane!

Contents

Cover (#ued7d3f22-ac93-5360-af24-fe6fabb61cd0)

Title Page (#u0466f18a-3316-59f3-840f-1840f3cca8cc)

Copyright (#ue841feab-e208-5efe-8ec9-73431b3ccfe9)

Dedication (#ue996201b-8bfd-561d-954a-ec6502357e14)

Epigraph (#u3dfa4592-ea6b-57d6-aa02-370679cb6803)

Bomb (#u3c59e2d9-d396-5b57-b44d-cd44b5d75fb5)

The Nettling of Harold (#ud514c3d0-d542-5ee8-b953-5a0152734495)

Rocking Horse (#ucb82d03b-2e99-5d76-b34b-3020059e4966)

Monsall (#u5306141d-1936-5ef6-b629-b75035b89447)

Porch (#litres_trial_promo)

Mrs E. Paminondas (#litres_trial_promo)

Mrs Finch’s Gatepost (#litres_trial_promo)

St Mary’s Vaccies (#litres_trial_promo)

Widdershins (#litres_trial_promo)

Bunty (#litres_trial_promo)

Bike (#litres_trial_promo)

Mr Noon (#litres_trial_promo)

Half-Chick (#litres_trial_promo)

DOWN MOSS LANE (#litres_trial_promo)

Bomb (1955) (#litres_trial_promo)

St Mary’s Vaccies (1974) (#litres_trial_promo)

The Nettling of Harold (2001) (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Alan Garner (#litres_trial_promo)