My Father and the Silver King

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

299 kr

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Ambrose Erswell ran away from home in London’s East End when he was seven years old, lived on the streets and joined a gang of child pickpockets. At nine he signed on as a “ship’s boy” on a clipper ship sailing to South America — an experience so grim he vowed never to go to sea again. In a bicycle shop, where he found a job, he saw his first automobile. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for cars. By twelve years of age he’d become a chauffeur. When he saw The Silver King, a melodrama in which the wronged hero is redeemed after making a fortune in a silvermine in South America, he decided that his life must follow a similar trajectory. Like the hero of the play, this cockney lad, who would eventually (in his mid-fifties) become the author’s father, left England and made a fortune in an unlikely business in Australia. The author traces her attraction to the music of the Piraeus underworld and the men who sang the rembetika to her father and to the Music Hall songs she was raised on.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-03-19
Mått148 x 210 x 19 mm
Vikt410 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor242
FörlagColenso Books
ISBN9781912788460

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Biografier inom Biografier

Born in Australia, Gail Holst-Warhaft is a writer and translator who has published a number of books about modern Greek music and literature, and translated some of Greece’s most important writers into English. Her translations of Greek literature and her own poems have been published in book form and in various journals. While living in Greece in the 1970s she played the harpsichord with some of Greece’s leading composers. She now lives with her husband in Ithaca, upstate New York.

List of illustrations viAcknowledgements viiiA Word of Introduction xDedication xiiCHAPTERONE London — East End — 1893 1TWO Around Cape Horn 11THREE The Silver King 29FOUR My Father’s Short War 43FIVE The Chauffeur and Another Sea Voyage 53SIX The Gamble 69SEVEN Cane 79EIGHT A Car and a Bride 95NINE In-Laws 113TEN Gouge 127ELEVEN My Parents’ Courtship 141TWELVE Rats — And Yet Another Voyage 151THIRTEEN Ella — The Americans — I arrive 161FOURTEEN Eltham 177FIFTEEN Ella and Teddy 189SIXTEEN Travelling with My Father 201SEVENTEEN My Father the Levendis 215Afterlife 221