Robin Dalton's memoir is 50 years old; Clive James' fond, flashy foreword is 20 years old. Don't let either of these facts deter you.
The procession of eccentric and grotesques from 1930s Kings Cross reappears in this Text Classics reissue. Very appropriate: the author is something of a classic herself, in her mid-90s as I write this, a one-time spy for the Thai Government, film producer, literary agent for writers luminous (Orwell) and writers ludicrous (Joan Collins).
After its famous opening, which most authors would give their dentures to have written, the novella-sized narrative hurtles into Dalton's childhood in the Cross' only private home, outside which prostitutes hailed customers with "Thirty bob - strip to the earrings!"
Everyone is a Great Character, especially the elderly rellies. There's Auntie Jan, who died from blowing up a balloon. Aunt Bertie, who could never bring herself to write the words "Roman Catholic", but always put a large black cross. Aunt Juliet, who wore dark glasses, a silver fox jacket and an osprey-feather hat - in bed - and who kept her diseased appendix in the drawing room.
Then there was the time Dalton's mother killed the plumber; the patient with the boil on her backside; the lobsters waving at passers-by.
