I suspect our teachers were desperate to suggest anything that might interest us. At the time I was a teenager attending a not particularly high achieving, all girls, comprehensive in Hull in the 1970’s. Although it sold over 100,000 copies in its first week, it was banned in fourteen states for being pornographic. Given that background, you might be surprised to know that it was recommended to me by a teacher for historical background reading. The cover was definitely of its time and each volume cost the princely sum of 50p.įorever Amber was first published in the United States in 1944 to a mixed reception. Though if I’m being correct it should be books, as while the current edition is in one volume, my dated edition is in 2 vols. My choice is Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, the only book I have ever read twice. Like it’s modern counterpart, it saw new, sometimes shocking fashions, a resurgence in clubs and theatres and had a seedy and criminal underbelly. It was the Restoration version of the swinging sixties. It was a period that turned its back on the religious and moral puritanism of Cromwell and heralded in a time of immorality and licentiousness. It too was a place emerging from a time of austerity after the war (albeit Civil this time) and a period when the country was a Republic.

This time we’re going back in time to another London, in the 1660’s. As Simon Michael recently took us to London in the 1960’s, that gave me the opportunity to share one of my favourite books with a London link.

Forever amber book review