Tag: memoir

Throwback Thursday: Please, Mister Postman by Alan Johnson

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ThrowbackThursday

Please, Mister PostmanAbout the Book

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, apparently notorious among the locals, in fact came as a blessed relief after the tensions of Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms.

Alan had become a postman the previous year, and in order to support his growing family took on every bit of overtime he could, often working twelve-hour shifts six days a week. It was hard work, but not without its compensations – the crafty fag snatched in a country lane, the farmer’s wife offering a hearty breakfast and even the mysterious lady on Glebe Road who appeared daily, topless, at her window as the postman passed by …

Please, Mister Postman paints a vivid picture of England in the 1970s, where no celebration was complete without a Party Seven of Watney’s Red Barrel, smoking was the norm rather than the exception, and Sunday lunchtime was about beer, bingo and cribbage. But as Alan’s life appears to be settling down and his career in the Union of Postal Workers begins to take off, his close-knit family is struck once again by tragedy …

Format: Hardcover (327 pp.)    Publisher: Bantam Press
Published: 17th September 2014   Genre: Autobiography, Non-Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Please, Mister Postman on Goodreads

My Review

I’m attending several events at this year’s Henley Literary Festival (which runs from 29th September to 7th October),  and one of them is ex-Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson talking about In My Life, the latest volume of his award-winning memoirs.  Before entering parliament in 1997, Alan had a career in the Post Office and was General Secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union.     My husband also worked for the Post Office around the same time and knew some of the people that Alan mentions in his books.  In preparation for the event, we’ve both been reading earlier books in the series: The Long and Winding Road (my review to follow) and Please, Mister Postman (which my husband reviews below).

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Alan Johnson’s second volume of memoir, Please, Mister Postman, covers his time as a postman in Slough and describes family and community life on the Britwell Estate in the 1970s and 1980s.  I found the account of working life at Slough Post Office vivid, very interesting and enlightening.  The daily banter between colleagues (familiar to me) was funny but often wise, and incidents on the postmen’s rounds (known as ‘walks’) could be revealing!

This, of course, was an important period of transformation when the Post Office was reorganized to become a corporation and no longer a government department, and telecommunications split from the postal side of the business.  Alan joined the Union of Communication Workers very early on and became Branch Chairman in Slough before being elected to the National Executive Council of the UCW.

The book ends at a pivotal moment in Alan’s personal life.

Alan Johnson is appearing at Henley Literary Festival on 30th September 2018 (event sold out at time of writing) 

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In three words: Wry, fascinating, honest

Try something similar…This Boy by Alan Johnson

Alan JohnsonAbout the Author

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950.  He was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle in 1997. He served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010.  Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Education and Health.

His first memoir, This Boy, was published in May 2013 and won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize.  Alan’s latest book, In My Life: A Music Memoir, was published in September 2018.

Connect with Alan

Website  ǀ  Goodreads

Throwback Thursday: A Countess in Limbo by Olga Hendrikoff & Sue Carscallen

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

I recently took part in the blog tour for A Romanov Empress by C. W. Gortner, the fictionalised story of the life of Maria Feodorovna, mother of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia.    Whilst reading the book, it reminded me of a fascinating memoir I read in 2017 by a woman who lived through some of that turbulent period in Russian history.  Called A Countess in Limbo: Diaries in War & Revolution, it recounts the experiences of Countess Olga “Lala” Hendrikoff based on her personal journals collected and translated by her great niece, Sue Carscallen.  To read a wonderful interview with Sue about her memories of Olga and the process of writing the book, click here.

A Countess in Limbo was published in November 2016 by Archway Publishing and you can find purchase links below.

CountessAbout the Book

Countess Olga “Lala” Hendrikoff was born into the Russian aristocracy, serving as lady-in-waiting to the empresses and enjoying a life of great privilege. But on the eve of her wedding in 1914 came the first rumours of an impending war – a war that would change her life forever and force her to flee her country as a stateless person with no country to call home.  Spanning two of the most turbulent times in modern history—World War I in Russia and World War II in Paris – Countess Hendrikoff’s journals demonstrate the uncertainty, horror, and hope of daily life in the midst of turmoil. Her razor-sharp insight, wit, and sense of humour create a fascinating eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution and the occupation and liberation of Paris.

Format: ebook (337 pp.)                           Publisher: Archway Publishing
Published: 3rd November 2016             Genre: Memoir, History, Non-Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find A Countess in Limbo on Goodreads

My Review

I found these journals absolutely fascinating and I was amazed how a woman could live through such upheaval, struggle, loss and privation and still provide such an objective commentary on events, managing to see the good – and bad – on both sides.

In the first section, the young Olga recounts some of her experiences living in Russia at the outbreak of World War I.  There are touching scenes, such as when she and her mother witness the departure of her younger brother to join the army. ‘To the strains of martial music, the train, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun, started pulling away from the platform and soon vanished in the evening darkness.  With long-repressed tears flowing without measure, my mother and I stood on the platform for a few more minutes.’

Olga did not keep journals throughout her life – or at least, none remain – so there are gaps where only her great niece’s research can try to provide welcome answers.  One such mystery is the circumstances around the ending of her marriage after only three years.

The sections of the book containing the journals Olga Hendrikoff kept during World War 2, covering the onset of war, the occupation of France and its liberation, I found particularly compelling.  Throughout there is a sense of incredulity that nations should so quickly repeat the mistakes of history.  ‘Another war with Germany seems incredible to me when no-one has yet forgotten the last one.’  Later she observes: ‘I often wake up in the morning thinking I have had a bad dream – the war, the departure of friends and relatives…  The first few days after the war was declared, it was if I was stunned.  I could not bring myself to believe that the country I live in is really at war.’

Olga documents the daily struggle to find food, fuel to keep warm and employment so that items only available on the thriving black market can be purchased.  She vividly describes how the German advance into France provokes the desperate flight of people.  ‘The route nationale is still clogged with refugees who make use of any means of locomotion: men on bicycles, women on foot pushing baby carriages, babies in wheelbarrows pulled like trailers by bicycles, mule- or horse-drawn carriages, strollers…in a word, anything on wheels, anything that rolls, has been mobilised for the exodus.’

The liberation of Paris brings no end to the food shortages, power cuts and daily struggle.  It also brings something worse – reprisals against those deemed to have been collaborators.  ‘In the troubled times we are going through, alas, the spirit of personal vengeance is naturally given free rein.’

Olga becomes one of hundreds of thousands stateless émigrés, in her case unable to return to Russia following the revolution and its transformation into the Soviet Union.   However, she never loses her affection for her homeland, which she looks back on fondly.  ‘Would it suddenly be possible to go back to your own country and see Russian forests again, the rivers you knew as a child, the landscapes you still hold in your heart?’ In the end, economic pressures force her to leave France and, since a return to Russia is impossible, she embarks for America where she spent the remainder of her long life.

Countess Hendrikoff was clearly a remarkable woman with wit, intelligence, resilience, compassion for others and a relentless determination to survive.  It is wonderful that her journals survive in order that modern readers can share her experiences and her admirable outlook on life.  There is so much more that I could mention about this book but I will simply urge you to read it for yourself.  One final quotation, should you need more persuading: ‘All war seems absurd to me anyway.  The victors often lose in the exchange, and the vanquished think only of revenge.’

I received a review copy courtesy of the author and publishers, Archway Publishing, in return for an honest review.

In three words: Enthralling, moving, inspirational

Try something similar… The Romanov Empress by C. W. Gortner (read my review here)

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CarscallenAbout the Authors

Olga Hendrikoff was born in 1892 in Voronezh, Russia, and attended the famous Smolny Institute. In 1914, she married Count Peter Hendrikoff just as World War I began.  In the ensuing years, Hendrikoff lived in Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Philadelphia. She spent her last 20 years in Calgary. She died in 1987.

Sue Carscallen spent 20 years with Olga Hendrikoff before her great aunt’s passing in 1987.  Carscallen stumbled upon Hendrikoff’s diaries hidden in a trunk at her great aunt’s Calgary home.  Over time she unraveled the mysteries hidden in the manuscripts, travelling to France and Russia to supplement her research into Hendrikoff’s life.  Today, Carscallen resides in Calgary.

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