Very often the test of one’s allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument...

In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we’re supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly...

I always thought of him as a stoic, solid person, that I think was typical of that era of the 1950s, … People came out of the war years with great hope and great faith...

The 1950s is a key decade in the 20th Century. Each year has a distinctive flavour.

… family men, Claude.””Then why aren’t they home with their families?””You haven’t been listening to me, Claude. It takes lots of honey to raise a family these days…” No, it isn’t even that, these teddy...

While I’m frustrated at the amount I’m expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded – not being allowed to take things on at all.

After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve...

Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother’s generation.

Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being “false,” “untrue,” yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.

When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the...

Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces,...

The country is like a great sponge—it finally absorbs you. Eventually you will get malaria or you will get dysentery and whatever you do, if you don’t keep doing it, the jungle will grow over...

I’m drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons – everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.

The fifties is a decade when every year is markedly different from the one before and after. That doesn’t happen every decade. 1983 isn’t that much different from 1986. But 1953 is very different from...

You wanted to live inside the lines where the ordinariness of everything would protect you from the dragons that lay at the edge of the map ready to blow fire in your face if you...

He’s more a shape in a drape than a hep cat