I Came Out Sideways [electronic resource] : From Liverpool to Another Place
Porter, George2014
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George Porter was born on the fault-line, that perilous place where he lived neither in material comfort nor in abject poverty. To one side of his family's cramped home in Waterloo, were the terrors of the Liverpool slums, where they would surely end up if his father continued to bet on losers; to the other were the well-to-do who lived in council houses and had manners and ways of life that were completely alien to 'little Georgie.' His boyhood heroes were Flash Gordon, Zorro and - best of all - Popeye, and though he'd never heard of philosophy, he came to realise that Popeye's cry of 'I am what I am' was a good enough guide to getting through life. Written off by the education system for failing the eleven-plus, George spent his time kicking toe-enders against the wall of the pub and dreaming of playing alongside the great Billy Liddell, while his brother went to Grammar School to learn Latin and rugby, subjects that it was assumed that George would have no possible use for. His life changed when he joined the Boy Scouts, acquired an armful of badges, bought the militaristic propaganda wholesale, and signed up at the age of 14 to join the Army. In this witty memoir full of fascinating characters, George Porter perfectly captures the spirit of Liverpool in the aftermath of war; what it was like to be told you had your 'brains in your boots' because you couldn't recite your twelve times table; and how just one fortuitous meeting changed his life.
Main title:
Author:
Porter, George, Author
Edition:
1
Imprint:
[Place of publication not identified] : Andrews UK, 2014
Collation:
1 online resource (1 text file)
System details:
Mode of access: Internet
Biography/History:
George Porter was born in Liverpool in 1943. At fourteen he left school to join the Army as a boy soldier and subsequently served in Germany, the Persian Gulf, and Norway. He was seconded from the British Army to The Trucial Oman Scouts in 1963 (now the United Arab Emirates), an Arab force policing the seven sheikdoms of the then Trucial States. In Germany he worked as a court shorthand writer for Army Legal Services and finished his career in 1969 in Oslo as the personal assistant to the Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Northern Europe. In 1970 he was employed in the music publishing industry as a management trainee and in 1973 he was appointed General Manager of the UK office of a large American publisher, subsequently forming his own publishing /recording company. He also became involved in magazine publishing, acting as managing editor of five county magazines and publishing the house journal of the NFU. He has a combined honours degree in English and History from Ruskin University Cambridge and has a keen interest in the origins of Ancient Greek literature, although he admits to being no classicist. He spent three years in Nigeria working on an adult literacy project for the British Council where he travelled the length and breadth of the country meeting and working with the many different peoples, of whom the Fulani nomads further influenced his contention that western civilization owes a great deal more to Africa than has ever been attributed. He is the author of a memoir, I Came Out Sideways, and of Black Antigone, a new interpretation of Sophocles' classical tragedy.
ISBN:
9781909183667
Language:
English
BRN:
2900497
Electronic access:
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