Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood

by Bryan Magee

Hoxton, today a fashionable part of inner London, was once one of the capital’s most notorious slum areas. Here, Brian Magee brings us this enormously attractive memoir of the vanished world of his working-class childhood.

Genres: Biography, History, Travel, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Bryan Edgar Magee was a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.

He attended Keble College, Oxford where he studied History as an undergraduate and then Philosophy, Politics and Economics in one year. He also spent a year studying philosophy at Yale University on a post-graduate fellowship.

Magee's most important influence on society remains his efforts to make philosophy accessible to the layman. Transcripts of his television series "Men of Ideas" are available in published form in the book Talking Philosophy. This book provides a readable and wide-ranging introduction to modern Anglo-American philosophy.

Reviews

[Adrian]

British writer, politician, philosopher's memoir of life in Hoxton, London for the first nine years of his life. Ends with the start of WWII. Variously interesting childhood. His description of his mother as a person who never liked anyone and frequently told Brian and his sister that she wished she'd never had children stands out. Magee describes himself as having 'near total absorption and near total recall' of things he witnessed as a kid. He speculates that he might have had some form of autism. Give him credit for describing scenes in which he comes across as a little shit. He certainly was a lad with high spirits which he feels he inherited from his dad and grandfather both 'enjoyers'. Good accounting of seeing supporters of British fascism marching in his neighbourhood in mid 1930s. Only drawback of book is lack of photos-it's always nice to see the person you're reading about.

[Jacob Smullyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece. The greatest memoir of early childhood I have ever read, capturing his experience not just in remarkable detail - Magee has a preternatural memory - but with a remarkable wholeness, so that one feels that not only are the facts of experience conveyed, but that the experience itself comes to life and one can taste its essence. That the book records so vividly a vanished world makes it all the more precious, but even that is a secondary achievement.

[Fabrice Conchon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is an amazing book narrating the childhood of the author in the poor, deprived London suburb of Hoxton. It is one of these fascinating “childhood book” that depicts a London that is now gone, a London where road traffic was caused by horse drawn carriages, of London where each street of this poor area was full with shops or pubs (not part of a chain!).

The book is full of touching anecdotes about the author’s childhood, the story of his parents (especially the loveless mother) is very insightful of the life of poor people at this time. This is all easy to read, in a word gripping: you really feel like reading the next page after you have finished one.

The penultimate chapter (telling about Oswald Mosley, black shirts and British fascists) is very interesting, first because it explains how Mosley tried to spread his fascist ideas (in one of the most receptive constituencies where his party will candidate) and also how these kind of people can be seen through the eyes of a child. This also is very insightful.

A great novel but … (there is a but!) not as fantastic as the most fantastic of the London childhood memoir: This boy by Alan Johnson (which I also strongly recommend)

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read something by Bryan Magee, who has recently died, but can't understand philosophy, so I decided his autobiography would be just the right thing. What an extraordinary memoir! I didn't completely escape philosophy, but when it occurred, it was quite grounded. In his earliest chapter he writes "I was all the time avid for something, and I did not know what, so I wanted to absorb everything." And his recall is unbelievable. You will get a thorough picture of a neighborhood of London from a time when it was usual for working people and kids in school to go home for lunch, which was the main meal and homemakers shopped for the household's food every day (going to separate stores for different items) in a time before refrigeration. Magee's writing is worth reading - see this sample description of the daily market in Hoxton: "The sound of it all was multi-layered: a background noise of hundreds of people talking at once in the open air, over which individual voices were heard calling out to one another, and on top of all that, overriding everything else, the air-splitting cries of the stall-keepers, all shouting at once, each trying to draw attention to his particular goods by shouting either his wares or his prices, the jokers also joshing with the passersby or with neighbouring stall-keepers...At the rare sign of any more widespread and lasting trouble, mounted policemen would appear on their spectacular horses, and begin to move gently in amongst the crowd, calming it down, exchanging pleasantries with the traders, or with men in the crowd they recognised, and letting the women and children pat their horses." What a change from the seriously armored police we have now!

[Muaz Jalil · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's volume 1 of Magee's 3-volume autobiography. I am a big fan of Magee. It's about his early childhood in Hoxton. For his development of ideas, read Confession of a Philosopher. Hoxton is the prewar period with its wet market reminded me of Karwan Bazar in Dhaka Bangladesh, where I am originally from. He talks about the rise of Mosley and anti-Semitism in the mid-30s. Did not know he came from a shopkeeper family (clothing store) - came a long way considering his economic background and the hardship they faced. His father was an avid Wagner and a socialist, anti fascist (not pro stain), which explains Magee's fascination with Wagner and labour party involvement.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gem of a book. The author was an obvious deep-thinker from even his earliest childhood. At the same time he was a keen observer of life in general, of characters and emotions in particular. Magee's life story began in Hoxton, a part of London, Though seemingly disadvantaged, Magee's intelligence and self-motivation pushed him into higher places career-wise. This is a book that is highly recommended for readers of London area life in the 1930's and onward.

[Maxine Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and informative, this memoir is a potted history of Hoxton in the 1930's.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life in the 1930s Hoxton , London UK.

George V, Abdication, George VI, after WW1, The Blitz, Paper Boys, Tea Boys, Milkman, Cobblestone, Horses on the road more than cars, coals, tin bathtub in the kitchen...

[Jane Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

a perfect little masterpiece of a childhood memoir. He gives us Hoxton in the 1930s through a child's eyes. Although Hoxton has changed unrecognisably, London is still London "on the other side of the canal it was Islington". He remembers EVERYTHING. He and his friends playing in the deserted silent streets of the City on a Sunday, kicking their ball against the tall buildings which echoed their voices down the silent streets. People scraping the rubbish out of the gutters when the market was on to burn on their fires at home. The singing in the pubs. Some of this echoed things my own London family did and said - they used to have a knees-up at home at Christmas, not in the pub. It was a cultural memory. I still know what an actual knees-up is from seeing my grandparents and great-uncles do it when I was a child.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This enjoyable memoir of life in the poorer part of pre-war London was recommended by a writer for the Financial Times of London. I don’t know this British personality, but his straightforward writing style brings this London neighborhood to life again. The story ends sadly with the reflection that most of the places he has described were destroyed in the bombing.