Author(s): Leila Berg

Literature | CB Editions | Society

Introduced by Ruth Fainlight
Afterword by Hilary Mantel

‘A strikingly original autobiography, vivid and poetic, funny, sensuous and searingly raw.’ 
     – Times Educational Supplement

 Flickerbook is the classic autobiography of the writer Leila Berg (1917–2012), who fought all  her life ‘fiercely and often provocatively for the right of children to be listened to, understood and accepted’ (TES). It recreates childhood pleasures and fears, relationships with family and lovers, and growing political engagement. It ends with an air-raid siren in September 1939: ‘Something new is beginning, and we fumble because we don’t know what it is.’

 ‘This extraordinary memoir … is a series of evocative images which tentatively recreate the emotions of a young girl ... It works magnificently well … the honesty and poetic insight of this superb autobiography.’ 
     – Times Literary Supplement 

 ‘This may be the autobiography of one little girl, from baby bridesmaid to Young Communist rebel losing two lovers to the Spanish Civil War, but it has a universal quality – you’ll be catapulted straight back to your own childhood.’
     – She

 ‘A wonderfully vivid depiction of the radicalism of the 1930s and, beyond that, an exceptionally artful and honest portrait of adolescent rites of passage.’
     – Independent on Sunday

‘It works in difficult places, this book . . . Berg is a fine, evocative writer, with a great ear and eye.’
     – New Statesman 

 ‘An evocative picture of a time and a society, shot through with brilliant vignettes.’
     – Penelope Lively

Leila Berg (1917–2012) grew up in a Jewish immigrant neighbourhood in Salford, Greater Manchester. Flickerbook records her childhood and early youth. In the late 1960s she devised, wrote for and edited the Nippers series of early readers, pioneering the inclusion of working-class and ethnic-minority experience and language in books for children. Her books about childhood and progressive education include Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive, Reading and Loving and Look at Kids! For more information, see www.leilaberg.com.

Ruth Fainlight’s many books include New & Collected Poems (2010) and Somewhere Else Entirely (2018) as well as translations, short stories and libretti.

 Hilary Mantel, DBE, is twice winner of the Booker Prize