The Shuttered Arcade

How we had a culture but forgot where we left it. ‘Our culture now no longer seems to belong to the history that produced it. It’s a non-sequitur, an answer that doesn’t fit the question. We all expect change but surely, we could have done better than this? Welded on to a heritage many are completely oblivious to, our present looks exactly what it is: phoney, stolen, ripped-off and botched…’ from The Shuttered Arcade In this follow-up to his earlier memoir Juke Box Karma, James Vollmar takes a nostalgic journey through the culture of the 1950s and 1960s he grew up in, from a childhood in Northamptonshire and seaside holidays in Norfolk, by way of a family heritage in Worcestershire to later travels in the Scottish islands where, in the remote farmhouse on Jura where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, he finds an enduring metaphor for our times. Enlivened by portraits of musicians, comedians, writers and sporting figures from a golden age of entertainment The Shuttered Arcade makes essential reading for anyone who values the culture of the 1960s and wonders how we could have let such a glorious tapestry unravel…