I hesitate to call this a review as I’m suspicious of such things. The format seems to consist of a few words about the book; then an explanation of why the book would have been much better if a pet idea of the reviewer’s had been its main theme; and finally a catalogue of typographical mistakes in the footnotes to the appendices. Something like this…
‘Jim Sutton has written a worthy history of Alsager. However, it is fatally flawed by its appalling silence on the subject of the development of sex education in Alsager before the Second World War. And, really, it is a bit disheartening to see a misplaced apostrophe on p.523 and a colon which should have been a semi-colon on the very next page!’
On the other hand, I don’t want to sound as if I’m a recipient of Mervyn’s slush fund by being too gushing. I am a fan, though: a little bit of Mervyn Edwards sits in my bookcase. Mervyn has got the tone just right. He writes books which people will read and which will both entertain and inform them. Not for him heavy academic theory; but there’s enough information there to show that he knows his stuff.
The Burslem book is an oral (and visual) history. He simply lays one life story on top of another, edited only for nostalgia, as he says in a one-page introduction. ‘The aim has been to create a community product which will engender discussion and further contributions,’ he says on the same page (which I’ve almost reproduced in full now!).
I liked the book a lot, but I wonder what it all means. Does it tell us about the history of Burslem or only these individuals? Would Mervyn come and engender some discussion at the Guild? And he really should have found out something about sex education before the Second World War. It would have made the book SO much more informative.