Alwyn W Turner
|
|
Alwyn W Turner is a London-based writer of non-fiction whose work covers a diverse range of interests, from pulp fiction to politics, fashion to film, rock & roll to military bands. Running through it all is a fascination with the cultural, social and political history of Britain since the War. He is the author of acclaimed books on Britain in the 1970s and 1980s – Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice! – and on the first decades of British rock and roll: Halfway to Paradise and My Generation, both accompanied by exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum. His most recent work is an e-book, Things Can Only Get Bitter: The Lost Generation of 1992, published in March 2012 to mark his fiftieth birthday. A fuller treatment of the 1990s will be available in 2013. He is also the author of The Biba Experience and The Man Who Invented the Daleks, the co-author of Cult Rock Posters 1972-82 and Magic Gardens, and editor of Portmeirion. Details of these, and other books, can be found on this site. In 2012 he was appointed Associate Research Fellow at the University of Chichester. His work has been widely and enthusiastically reviewed, and has appeared in Books of the Year lists in the Sunday Times, the Observer, the New Statesman and the Spectator, and as Books of the Month in BBC History magazine and Publishing News. TV appearances range from Richard & Judy and Flog It! to Panorama, and radio broadcasting from Radio 4's Start the Week and The Last Word through to an agreeable half-hour with his favourite radio DJ Johnnie Walker on Radio 2, reminiscing about Biba. He has also contributed to documentary series such as Cilla's Unswung Sixties (UKTV), about the less fashionable end of the 1960s, Beyond a Joke (ITV), about sitcoms in the 1970s and 1980s, and Stand Down, Margaret (Radio 2) about political pop in the 1980s. In previous lives he has been a gardener for the Army, a cinema projectionist, a failed election candidate, a secretary and a singer with an art-noise post-blues band (‘a cross between Anthony Perkins and Sandy from Crossroads,’ said the Melody Maker).
Feel free to email: alwyn at alwynwturner dot com.
|
|
– Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph Indispensible. – James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday Superb. – Nick Cohen, Standpoint Turner may be an anorak, but he is an acutely intelligent anorak. – Francis Wheen, New Statesman Fascinating stuff. – John Harris, The Guardian Entertaining, insight- ful and wide-ranging. – Roger Lewis, Daily Mail Concise, cogently argued and leavened with a dry wit. – Christopher Silvester, Daily Express Wit, colour and detail. – Brian Groom, Financial Times Eclectic, not to say eccentric. – Francis Beckett, Guardian As far away from sober, stuffy history as you can get. – Sue Baker, Publishing News A lifelong gloom addict. – Lloyd Evans, The Spectator Rather good. – Norman Tebbit, Daily Telegraph |