A must-read memoir of childhood like no other. Where to begin? First, it was sadly published posthumously, he died in 2003, so we will tragically never get the next slice. Second, it’s the journey from childhood into youth of a renowned professor of philosophy and as such exquisitely written. Third, it’s a fascinating period, 1923 on. Fourth, he is the product of a German born impresario and a brainless, obsessive English showgirl whom he despised as he grows up in suburban Surrey during the 20s and 30s. Fifth, divided into three sections, with the middle one a family history, it is unique. With amazing reactions to the world around him, a tremendous gift for observing the minutiae of life and a most pleasant pedantic style, this unusual memoir is not to be missed. Germs: origin or beginning (Chambers Dictionary).
The son of affluent parents - a distant, dandified impresario father he revered; a beautiful, mindless 'Gaiety Girl' mother he came to regret loathing - Richard Wollheim grew up in the English suburbia of the 1920s and 1930s. Germs is his account of those years. It is a book like no other; a remarkable exploration of childhood by one of the English-speaking world's most distinguished postwar thinkers.
