Life in the West

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The first volume of the Squire quartet, brisk and chatty. Published on 6th March 1980—as a loving card from my wife reminds me, still tucked into her copy of the book.

We were living on a quiet North Oxford street and our younger children were seriously into education. We were always moving house, depending on our fortunes.

Meanwhile, Tom Squire is in Ermalpa in Sicily, for a conference on the popular arts, dubbed ‘the arts of no refinement’. He claims that the pop art of one generation becomes the classic of the next. “Homer was, in his day, the Bronze Age equivalent of the TV soap opera.” Squire is for the new, insisting we rise up to change.

Later, back at Pippet Hall, Squire is filming and being filmed. The traditional pretty girl in a swimsuit is with him. She remarks that “We are all symbols to each other as well as real people.”

This is the period of the Cold War. Much discussion takes place. Squire and his wife quarrel bitterly. Over Christmas, Squire’s mother, Patricia Squire, dies.

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