‘Richard Cobb, historian and Francophile, seems to have had a photographic memory, and his memoir is both an uncannily vivid resurrection of past times, and a quirky, funny and irreverent personal testament.’ John Banville, Literary Review
In Still Life, Richard Cobb recreates the small world of Tunbridge Wells in entrancing detail as he experienced it between the ages of 4 and 13. He leads us through the town and into the lives of the characters among whom he grew up, from the mysterious Black Widow to Baroness Olga, the town’s only victim of the Russian Revolution. At home his mother entertains her tweed-and-Jaeger-clad Bridge-playing friends while down the road in their large, dank Victorian mansion his extraordinary cousins the Limbury-Buses live their lives according to an unchanging regime of walks, rests and meals which are timed to the minute.
‘Strange and wonderful,’ wrote Hilary Spurling in the Observer when the book was first published. And indeed it is. Click here to read an excerpt from the book and, for more strange and wonderful memoirs, browse our Slightly Foxed Editions series.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF office staff
Jennie, Anna, Hattie, Jess & Iona