Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews

✍ Scribed by Deryn Rees Jones, Michael Murphy

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 301
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Beryl Bainbridge, Clive Barker, Terence Davies, and J. G. Farrell represent only a handful of the fascinating and provocative writers who have emerged from the Liverpool literary scene in the past seventy-five years. Published in commemoration of Liverpool’s 800th birthday in 2007 and in celebration of its status as a European City of Culture in 2008, Writing Liverpool presents a selection of essays and interviews with the filmmakers, journalists, cultural critics, and novelists who have called the city home—asking if there is a distinctive Liverpool voice, and if so, how we identify it.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page......Page 4
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
List of Contributors......Page 9
Introduction: Sounding Liverpool......Page 14
1: George Garrett, Merseyside Labour and the Influence of the United States......Page 42
2: ‘No Struggle but the Home’: James Hanley’s The Furys......Page 56
3: Paradise Street Blues: Malcolm Lowry’s Liverpool......Page 68
4: ‘Unhomely Moments’: The Fictions of Beryl Bainbridge......Page 85
5: A Man from Elsewhere: The Liminal Presence of Liverpool in the Fiction of J.G. Farrell......Page 101
6: The Figure in the Carpet: An Interview with Terence Davies......Page 118
7: ‘Every Time a Thing Is Possessed, It Vanishes’: The Poetry of Brian Patten......Page 130
8: Finding a Rhyme for Alphabet Soup: An Interview with Roger McGough......Page 151
9: Rewriting the Narrative: Liverpool Women Writers......Page 158
10: Jumping Off: An Interview with Linda Grant......Page 173
11: Ramsey Campbell’s Haunted Liverpool......Page 179
12: ‘We Are a City That Just Likes to Talk’: An Interview with Alan Bleasdale......Page 197
13: ‘Culture Is Ordinary’: The Legacy of the Scottie Road and Liverpool 8 Writers......Page 207
14: ‘I’ve Got a Theory about Scousers’: Jimmy McGovern and Lynda La Plante......Page 223
15: Manners, Mores and Musicality: An Interview with Willy Russell......Page 241
16: Subversive Dreamers: Liverpool Songwriting Subversive Dreamers: Liverpool Songwriting......Page 252
17: Putting Down Roots: An Interview with Levi Tafari......Page 265
18: ‘Out of Transformations’: Liverpool Poetry in the Twenty-first Century......Page 278