Eric Newby (1919–2006)

When he left school, Eric Newby worked his way to Australia and back as an apprentice on one of the last generation of sail-powered cargo ships. Immediately after this he found himself plunged into equally adventurous military service in World War II. All of which didn't do much to prepare him for a civilian career after 1945. Offers to join expeditions to exotic parts of the world were slow to come in, so he gritted his teeth and joined the family firm, supplying ready-made clothes to the better class of provincial department stores.

In this memoir he tells us about that period of about fifteen years when he was working in the garment business whilst trying to get a toehold as a writer. We get amusing sketches of the archaic business world of Lane & Newby, Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers, and an affectionate portrait of the author's father, an Edwardian oarsman who often sounds like something out of J K Jerome, but seems to have had an acute eye for business (albeit with a blind spot for the bureaucratic obligations of postwar Britain). And of course there's a lot about the nightmarish world of fashion, where you have to decide months ahead of time what your fickle customers are going to want (or rather, what the store buyers are going to want on their behalf). In the Britain of the 1940s, with everything in short supply, and the French liable to change hemlines at a moment's notice, this was clearly no joke, even before they came up with the New Look...

Very much a period piece, but Newby knew what he was doing, and this is still an entertaining read long after almost everything in the commercial world it tells us about has become obsolete.… (plus d'informations)