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English oral

By some bizarre and apparently uncontrollable set of circumstances, I find that I have two books published within a few days of each other. Both have cars on the jacket, and both launches were on the same day at the beginning of May, but apart from that they’re rather different. One is about a troubled handsome man, and the other is about a troubled handsome car. Both are told by the people who know the stories best, a narrative oral history that builds in one book to a crescendo of disaster, and in the other to a crescendo of celebration and the fear of disaster. Both subjects are in their 50s. Only one of them jumps in front of a train.

I have now written four books of oral history, and three books of edited Mass Observation diaries (which assume a similar narrative drive), and increasingly this method of storytelling seems to me to be hard to beat. You need the right malleable subject matter, and it has its limitations in terms of analytical content, but there is no more compelling way of communicating a vivid story and the language and nature of its main participants. It can be deceptive though, as if the author is being led rather than pulling the strings; accordingly it can be useful to appear as a character, and blend in with the action while also marshalling it. That’s enough justification from me. I hope you like the books.