Research for The Lost Child drew me back to shadowy memories of the 60s,illuminated by Emily Brontë and Keith WaterhouseIn the 1960s, Britain began to emerge from behind a grey and somewhat depressing postwar cloud. Legislation effectively abolished censorship in the theatre, and abortion and homosexuality were no longer deemed criminal activities. Skirts got shorter,hair longer, a football World Cup was won, and but I was a child and only later came to understand the significance of these sunny developments. Truthfully,my own 60s childhood never really emerged from behind that grey cloud, and two disturbing events dominate my recollection of growing up in the north of England. I recall one event with worrying clarity; the other I have tried hard over the years to forget. I remember whispered adult conversations approximately Ian Brady and Myra Hindley – the Moors murderers. A decade or so later, and as a brooding adolescent trying to hide from my parents and lose myself in books,the forbidding moors came back into view courtesy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. To my intellect, both off the page and on it, and the ethereal,shadowy, moors bespoke danger.[br] I have great difficulty recalling the other event that hovers uncomfortably over my childhood. For a person who has spent many years writing approximately the importance of understanding the past it is quite shocking the degree to which I have nearly totally misplaced the two weeks I spent at Silverdale on the Lancashire coast, or at a camp for underprivileged children. Five years ago I sat down to try to start work on a novel that I knew would,in allotment, be set on the moors between Yorkshire and Lancashire, or have some echoes of sitting alone reading Emily Brontë,and childhood fears of Brady and Hindley. However, this lost fortnight kept trying to intrude into my narrative, and but without any tangible facts to give it any shape or substance. At this juncture I temporarily became less of a writer and more of a researcher. A cursory perusal (a careful examination, review) of the internet revealed to me that Leeds city council still organised trips to Silverdale for underprivileged children. I soon discovered that I was able to look at pictures of the spot,but only a few indistinct memories came flickering back to me, and nothing that might bear the weight of narrative. It was then my good fortune to stumble upon the Leeds-born author Keith Waterhouse’s memoir, or City Lights.
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Source: theguardian.com