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14 opere 434 membri 15 recensioni 1 preferito

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Opere di Harry Pearson

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Nome canonico
Pearson, Harry
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
United Kingdom
Nazione (per mappa)
United Kingdom
Luogo di residenza
Northumberland, England, UK
Attività lavorative
chef
author
journalist
writer
broadcaster
Breve biografia
Harry Pearson has produced six books, contributed to a
dozen more, written a weekly sports column in the Guardian
for ten years and helped make the football magazine When
Saturday Comes half-decent for nearly two decades. When not
painting toy soldiers, building a Wild West town in 1/72 scale or
feverishly trying to work out how many more Macedonian
phalangites he needs to finish before he can restage the Battle
of the Granicus, he spends his time staring wistfully into
space wondering where the years have gone. He lives in
Northumberland. Contrary to all previous assertions, he does
not own a spinet.

Harry Pearson (2), MA, FIMechE, FRAeS, MBIM, was awarded an Open Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford in 1932, and gained a first-class honours degree in Physics in 1935. He was employed by British Celanese and Standard Telephones and Cables before joining Rolls-Royce at Hucknall in 1940 as a Project Engineer on exhaust systems. In 1943, he became Performance Engineer, Gas Turbines, at Barnoldswick, transferring to Derby in 1946 as Chief Performance Engineer. In 1949 he was appointed Chief Research Engineer, becoming Chief Engineer, Performance and Research in 1960. In 1962 Harry pearson became Assistant Director of Engineering for the Aero Engine Division and a year later became Director of Personnel. Prior to 1971 when he became Assistant Group Technical Director, he served as Engineering Methods Advisor. He retired from the Company in 1976. He is the author of the Rolls-Royce and the Rateau Patents, Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust Technical Series No.1 (1989). ISBN: 0 9511710 8 9.

Utenti

Recensioni

I've been following Harry Pearson ever since his first book, The Far Corner, which was all about non-League football (a subject I have no interest in) in North-East England. For my money, he is consistently one of the funniest writers in the English language. This book just strengthens that reputation.

It is an account of his arm's length love affair with the Second World War and military matters in general. That love affair is expressed through the medium of a) British war comics, b) plastic model kits (mainly Airfix) and c) table-top wargaming. In amongst the anecdotes from his two childhoods - the one he had as a boy and the one he is now living through as an adult (allegedly) - he inserts a lot of social history of 1950s and 1960s Britain, plus a lot of history of the model soldier business.

World War 2 was the defining event for my father and others of his generation. It was reflected in the popular culture of comics, books, tv shows and films for possibly the following twenty years or more. Pearson maps this out and shows how it turned his generation, the "baby boomers" of the 1950s and 60s, into a generation obsessed with military modelling of some sort or another, I am of that generation; and I remember my junior school friends all being equally obsessed with modelling aircraft, tanks and ships. Pearson has written an account of all our childhoods that is both funny and true.

The same goes for his portrait of the wargaming community. The characters he illustrates are typical to most specialist interests and many readers will be able to identify the personalities and fill in their own selection of names known to them. I particularly identified with the final line of his acknowledgements, where he names all the people he's traded miniature figures with or faced across a wargames table, ending with "...several dozen blokes named Dave."
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
RobertDay | 1 altra recensione | Mar 30, 2024 |
Thoroughly enjoyable journey around the northern leagues in cricket. Lots of cameos and stories of great cricketers...
 
Segnalato
cbinstead | 1 altra recensione | Jun 24, 2022 |
Harry Pearson writes very well about soccer and people, and he's extremely funny. Here he travels to various lower league matches in northeast England during the 1993/4 season. Not being overly familiar with English non-league football I took the time to look up some of the people and places he talks about. I did discover there are thousands of teams in England in various leagues, both professional and amateur. I still don't understand it all.

Pearson conjures up some real characters. The shop owner who free-associates until he can turn every conversation to Len Shackleton is a favorite.

Pearson can flat out write. A gem: "Goalkeepers never admit to their mistakes. If it wasn't for their athletic abilities most of them would have gone into politics."

A section about Seaham Red Star's Paul Walker is some of the best writing in the book, or anywhere.

And the index is worth reading itself. One entry:
Bugger, Fat
libidinous effect on aquatic mammals of, 145

A wonderful football/soccer book about some teams and names you may not be familiar with.
… (altro)
½
2 vota
Segnalato
Hagelstein | 3 altre recensioni | Jun 7, 2020 |
Learie Constantine is a significant figure in West Indian and English history; an incredibly talented cricketer who played in the West Indies' inaugural Test (taking the West Indies first ever Test wicket), gaining the admiration of the world's leading cricketers, before becoming a legend in the north of England, playing in the leagues (the first black professional cricketer), qualifying as a barrister, elected to the inaugural Trinidad and Tobago parliament, appointed a senior minister in the government and appointed a Baron, the first black person to sit in the House of Lords.

Harry Pearson is a fine author who has been able to inject humour into his previous award-winning cricket books, so I looked forward to "Connie" as an example of quality cricket writing. Sadly, it comes across as the usual cricket writing, full of fulsome praise for the cricketer, with too many pages of "he hit a splendid 44" and not enough of what made the man behind the cricketer.

I warmed to "Connie" as I neared the final chapter or two but Pearson deals with Constantine's election to Trinidad & Tobago parliament and his important ministerial role in a page and his high commissioner to the UK and his baronetcy in another page. Surely Pearson could have devoted a few more pages to this part of Constantine's life.
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
MiaCulpa | Jun 14, 2019 |

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Statistiche

Opere
14
Utenti
434
Popolarità
#56,344
Voto
4.0
Recensioni
15
ISBN
53
Lingue
2
Preferito da
1

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