Pretty Good Apart From the Badges

At about 9 minutes 45 seconds into this BBC Radio 4 ‘Front Row’ podcast, originally transmitted on Wednesday July 16th

 

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/frontrow/frontrow_20140716-1955a.mp3

You can also listen here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0499dlw

 

 

you can hear an interview of Linda Grant, author of the new and rather good novel ‘Upstairs at the Party’ (The interviewer is Samira Ahmed).  As I’ve said, I played some small part in the making of this book, and Linda here explains how.

 

I do however deny the bit about the badges. I got over my badge problem when I was about 16, and by the time I met Linda I seldom wore any badges apart from a small (shudder) roughly shilling-sized white metal image of Lenin. I hope that this shameful confession will help readers believe my denials about the other thing.

 

The red shirts, however, are absolutely true. I possessed only three, which I alternated hygienically, making full use of our subsidised launderama facilities. At one stage, a kind and humorous female comrade actually offered to turn the collars (I accepted readily), as they were becoming frayed. Hard to imagine many young women at today’s universities even knowing how to turn a collar, let alone offering to do so.

 

I’m amazed, by the way, that the Brideshead references were unconscious. They are so strong that they were one of the first things I noticed about it. Mind you, I know the Evelyn Waugh book almost by heart, and return to it every few years. Odd that I already knew it well when I became a Marxist, and it didn't in any wayrestrain me. I think you simply fail to udnerstand nmost of the books you read, when you read them in your teens.