Romany and Tom
A Memoir
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- £8.49
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
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A moving, funny and beautifully written memoir by musician, DJ and writer Ben Watt which carefully chronicles his parents' lives, their marriage and their decline into old age
Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, 2014
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'Wise, moving and entertaining... a major achievement to rival any of Watt's recordings' - Guardian
'A poignant, life-affirming work' - Financial Times
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Ben Watt's father, Tommy, was a working-class Glaswegian jazz musician, a politicised left-wing bandleader and a composer. His heyday in the late fifties took him into the glittering heart of London's West End, where he broadcast live with his own orchestra from the Paris Theatre and played nightly with his quintet at the the glamorous Quaglino's.
Ben's mother, Romany, the daughter of a Methodist parson, schooled at Cheltenham Ladies' College, was a RADA-trained Shakespearian actress, who had triplets in her first marriage before becoming a leading showbiz columnist in the.sixties and seventies. They were both divorcees from very different backgrounds who came together like colliding trains in 1957.
Both a personal journey and a portrait of his parents, Romany and Tom is a vivid story of the post-war years, ambition and stardom, family roots and secrets, life in clubs and in care homes. It is also about who we are, where we come from, and how we love and live with each other for a long time.
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'You know when everyone last month was going 'Ben Watt's Romany & Tom is amazing?' I've just read it. It really is' - Caitlin Moran
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this unsentimental but moving memoir, noted musician, deejay, and author Watt details his parents' tumultuous marriage and painful decline into senility and death. His father, Tom, was a renowned jazz bandleader whose career disintegrated with the ascendance of rock music, while Romany, his mother, was a Shakespearean actress who became a showbiz writer and columnist. With Romany's star rising as Tom's fell, the tensions between them increased, a strife further fueled by shared alcoholism and family histories of depression (which burdens Watt as well). Their son attempts to smooth their paths into old age, including moving them to a new apartment and shuttling them to hospitals and managed care. Watt creates a kaleidoscopic impression of his parents' lives, flashing back to various eras in their relationship as he chronologically unwinds the course of their inevitable physical and mental collapse. In fluid, highly detailed prose he recreates scenes and places with an effortless immediacy. To good effect, Watt also draws upon the mementos and letters his mother kept, fragments that help him piece together the emotional landscape of a long struggle against the backdrop of post-WWII England. In the end, Watt casts an illuminating light on those strange figures he calls parents, and on ours.
