Macmillan Abt My Fathers Business

Lillian Beckwith takes us back to her childhood; to the years before the Second World War, when her father ran a small grocer’s shop in a Cheshire town. It was typical of so many corner shops – the shops that are now more and more becoming just a memory, overwhelmed by redevelopment and the march of the supermarket. The corner shop where customers were known, often friends, people, not just faces at a checkout point, where shopping was gossipy, unhurried. A shop full of remembered smells of childhood: soft soap, aniseed balls, bacon and tea. A shop that is brought to life by the acute, affectionate memories of the little girl who grew up in it. ...