Sunnyside Down

Everyone knows about Britain in the 1950s, a stuffy old place where there was only one television channel, where 'Uncle Mac' played the same records for children on the wireless every Saturday morning, and where most people actually did go to church every Sunday. But was it really the 'monochrome decade'? Growing up in a small village called Bunbury, Ken Blakemore's experiences were rather more surreal. Bunbury in the 1950s was a place filled with a rich mix of people, some of them close to the top of any weirdness scale. His re-creation of family and community in the '50s reveals the oddities of everyday life and the strangely pessimistic views of the world shared by the adults around him. "Sunnyside Down" paints a gently humorous picture of growing up in the '50s that will appeal to anyone who was there, and also to a younger audience. As the contemporary world becomes ever more fragmented and unpredictable, "Sunnyside Down" gives just one special glimpse of who we were - and, by contrast, what we have lost and who we are now.