Days from a Different World: A Memoir of Childhood

Days from a Different World: A Memoir of Childhood. John Simpson. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]18.99. xiv + 413 pages. ISBN 1-4050-5004-7. The author is the world affairs editor of the BBC and is often heard and seen philosophising on the state of mankind. This volume is his second examination of a childhood spent in Croydon, in particular, of ten days in different years between 1943 and 1951, with a final chapter devoted to a return visit in 2000.

The author mixes his own family memories with recollections of life as it was lived sixty years ago in an England very different indeed from today. He is best in painting nostalgic portraits of people and places and in remembering. He is less sure when making historical asides: to write that nineteenth-century 'divines' never wondered why 'there were different accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels' betrays a less than thorough knowledge of theological history. As Mr Simpson feels the need to remind readers that he does not belief in an afterlife, his mistake may therefore be more easily understood. (R.S.C.)

COPYRIGHT 2006 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning