Search - About My Father's Business

Lillian Beckwith is best known for her series of memoirs that recapture what it was like living in a tiny village in the Hebrides. But in this book she takes us back to the years when her father ran a small corner grocery store in a rural English village during the years in between the two world wars. It’s a charming book filled with fascinating details about a way of life that has completely vanished – a time when nothing came pre-packaged and everything had to be carefully weighed and measured or sliced and trimmed to the customer’s satisfaction and then carefully wrapped in paper that was tied with string from a special dispenser that hung above the cash register. The grocer’s shop was the center of the community and everyone knew everyone else – although that wasn’t always such a good thing. A quick and delightful read, this is the kind of book that keeps my Anglophile heart happy and makes me homesick for a way of life I’ve never known. But even though it sounds quaint and charming most likely I wouldn't really have found life in a tiny little village in the twenties and thirties nearly as much fun to live as it is to read about.