Heads and Straights by Lucy Wadham

Author:Lucy Wadham [Wadham, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846146404
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help of my family. I would like to thank my mother for her courage in answering my questions; my eldest sister, Louise (Bee), for having pushed me, despite all my misgivings, to tackle this subject in the first place; my sister Catherine (Izzy) for her support and her candour; my sister Amynta (Fly) for her strength and her remarkable ability to tell it as it is; Cissy, whose life merits a book of its own, and my dear brother, Tom (Joe), whose benign, unwavering presence sustains us all.

I am also grateful to my late uncle, Charles Fox (Henry), a hellraiser who not only filled our lives with fun, but who was also a gifted writer who taught me the trade. I have him to thank for encouraging his mother, Enid Duncan (Eileen), to sit down as an old lady and put her life on tape. Those delightful tapes provided much of my material and it is, as I came to realize as I was writing this little book, her indomitable spirit overarching the whole. I’m grateful to all the other members of this weird and wonderful family – some of whom I’ve mentioned – be they Heads or Straights.

My thanks also go to Helen Conford at Penguin Press for seeking me out and for trusting me, to Anthony Goff for his faith, to the London Underground for giving me the opportunity to dig down and take a good look at where I come from and to Luthfa Begum for helping me to bite the bullet. (In the run-up to publishing this book I received a message from one of the reps at Penguin. She knew Luthfa. Would I like her email address? With some trepidation, I wrote to Luthfa, sending her what I had written. ‘Funny thing,’ she wrote back. ‘I went to Kingsway too – ten years later – and loved it. Like you, it was the first time I properly met and got to know people from outside my Bengali community and my bit of the East End and it led to my own double existence for a few years. Amazing, the similarities, and I’d like to think it’s why we clicked that evening. It was brilliant fun and I do remember pushing the tables back and having a dance.’)

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