Liverpool: A Memoir of Words

Liverpool: A Memoir of Words
Author: Tony Crowley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1837644535

Written by an author brought up in working-class Liverpool in the 1960s and 1970s, Liverpool: A Memoir of Words is a work of creative non-fiction that combines the study of language in Liverpool with social history, the history of the English language and personal memoir. A beautifully written book, based on a lifetime’s academic research, it explores the relationship between language and memory, and demonstrates the ways in which words are enmeshed in history and history in words. Starting with ‘Ace’ and weaving its way alphabetically to ‘Z-Cars’, the work illustrates the deep relationship that has been forged in the past two hundred years or so between a form of language, a place and a social identity. The account is funny, sad, full of surprises and always illuminating. It tells the real history of ‘Scouse’, details the multicultural complexity of Liverpool English, examines the common use of ‘plazzymorphs’, and shows how Liverpudlian words exemplify standard processes of change and development. Neither a memoir, dictionary or history book, this work crosses different fields of knowledge in order to weave an engaging and fascinating story. It is a book that will educate and delight Liverpudlians, students of language and social historians alike.

Ghost Town

Ghost Town
Author: Jeff Young
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: Liverpool (England)
ISBN: 9781908213921

Losing the Thread

Losing the Thread
Author: Jim Powell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789622492

This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain's raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain's cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain's largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain's raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain's cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

Twopence to Cross the Mersey

Twopence to Cross the Mersey
Author: Helen Forrester
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0007369328

This major best-selling memoir of a poverty-stricken childhood in Liverpool is one of the most harrowing but uplifting books you will ever read.

The Liverpool English Dictionary

The Liverpool English Dictionary
Author: Tony Crowley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2017-09-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1786948338

From ‘Abbadabba’ to ‘Z-Cars’, this remarkable dictionary records the rich vocabulary that has evolved over the past century and a half, as part of the complex, stratified, multi-faceted and changing culture of Liverpool. The roots/routes, meanings and histories of the words of Liverpool are presented in a concise, clear and accessible format.

Reborn in the USA

Reborn in the USA
Author: Roger Bennett
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0062958720

The #1 New York Times Bestseller One-half of the celebrated Men in Blazers duo, longtime culture and soccer commentator Roger Bennett traces the origins of his love affair with America, and how he went from a depraved, pimply faced Jewish boy in 1980’s Liverpool to become the quintessential Englishman in New York. A memoir for fans of Jon Ronson and Chuck Klosterman, but with Roger Bennett’s signature pop culture flair and humor. Being a teenager isn’t easy, no matter where in the world you live or how much it does or doesn’t rain in your hometown. As an outsider—a private-schooled Jewish kid in working-class, heavily Catholic Liverpool—Roger Bennett wasn’t winning any popularity contests. But there was one idea, or ideal, that burned bright in Roger’s heart. That was America— with its sunny skies, beautiful women, and cool kids with flipped collars who ate at McDonald’s. When he embraced American popular culture, the dull gray world he lived in turned to neon teal—a color which had not even been invented in England yet. Introduced first through the gateway drug of The Love Boat, then to Rolling Stone, the NFL, John Hughes movies, Run-DMC, and Tracy Chapman, Roger embraced everything that would capture the imagination of a teenager growing up Stateside. When he made a real, in-the-flesh American friend who invited him over for the summer, he got to visit the promised land. A month in Chicago, and a life-changing night spent in the company of the Chicago Bears, was the first hit of freedom, of independence, of the Roger Bennett he knew he could be. (Re)Born in the USA captures the universality of growing pains, growing up, and growing out of where you come from. Drenched in the culture of the late ’80s and ’90s from the UK and the USA, and the heartfelt, hilarious sense of humor that has made Roger Bennett so beloved by his listeners, here is both a truly unique coming-of-age story and the love letter to America that the country needs right now.

All Down Darkness Wide

All Down Darkness Wide
Author: Seán Hewitt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593300084

Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature • Named a Best Book of 2022 by Kirkus, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness • Named a Best Book of July by Buzzfeed • A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction 2022 Summer Read • Observer Book of the Week • Lammy Finalist “The most beautiful prose I’ve read in years.”—Alexander Chee, The Atlantic • "Rapturous...Hewitt beautifully illuminates his own darknesses so that we might also see our own."—Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review • “Exquisitely written.”—Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis. All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot. Delving into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures before him, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of answers. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to a sacred grotto in the Pyrenees, it is a journey of lonely discovery followed by the light of community. Haunted by the rites of Catholicism and spectres of shame, it is nevertheless marked by an insistent search for beauty. Hewitt captures transcendent moments in nature with exquisite lyricism, honours the power of reciprocated desire and provides a master class in the incredible force of unsparing specificity. All Down Darkness Wide illuminates a path ahead for queer literature and for the literature of heartbreak, striking a piercing and resonant chord for all who trace Hewitt’s dauntless footsteps.

Richard Hobson of Liverpool

Richard Hobson of Liverpool
Author: Banner of Truth
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780851518459

This is the inspiring autobiography of Richard Hobson whose ministry, under the blessing of God, transformed the working-class district of Windsor in Liverpool. It will be of immense encouragement, not only to ministers of the Word, but to all who desire to see the gospel producing such effects in our own time. Yet Hobson had no thought of claiming any credit for this success, humbly entitling his account, 'What hath God wrought'. On J.C. Ryle's arrival in Liverpool as its first bishop in 1880, he found in Hobson a true friend, and came to regard him as a model pastor. Hobson's parish of St. Nathaniel's gave Ryle and his family their main spiritual home, and in 1900, when Ryle died, Hobson preached the bishop's funeral sermon. The story told here, against the back-drop of dirt and poverty in the largest port of the British Empire, is a wonderful example of the compelling power of love and prayer. Hobson taught his people to pray, as the one o'clock gun was fired daily, 'O God, for Jesus Christ's sake, send me thy Holy Spirit', and the prayer was answered.

Letters to Gil

Letters to Gil
Author: Malik Al Nasir
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2021-09-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0008464456

‘A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure’ IRENOSEN OKOJIE