Robyn Hitchcock – författare

Hitchcock's second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fuelled his early creative output'British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock's music to find this enchanting.' ―Publishers Weekly, on 1967'Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock's ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it.' ―Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue, on 1967STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behaviour. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met.On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.

'Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock's ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny,­ finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacri­ficing its sense of the breath-taking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it' MICHAEL CHABON'1967 . . . in which our hero looks down from the future at his squeaky realm of boyhood, a world of dayglo sunsets, and would-be denizens of music and the mind. Cometh the year, cometh the groover' JOHNNY MARR'Page Turner could be the name of a lead singer in a sixties psychedelic band, but it's not - it's a description of Robyn Hitchcock's tender and hilarious memoir' JOE BOYDA bright, obsessive compulsive boy is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school just before he reaches his thirteenth birthday; just as Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles' Revolver explodes.In January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for his green Dalek sponge and his family's comforting au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he's mutated into a 6 ft 2-inch rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really stoned and move to Nashville.In between, as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside, Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester (think Gormenghast via Evelyn Waugh), threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers and a sullen old maid - a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. And his home life isn't any more normal . . .At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?

1967 explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive/compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of 13; just as Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes.When he arrives in January 1966 Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for his green Dalek sponge and his family's comforting au pair, Teresa. By December 1967 he's mutated into a 6 ft 2 inch rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really stoned and move to Nashville.In between - as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside - Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester (think Gormenghast via Evelyn Waugh), threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid - a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. And his home life isn't any more normal...At the end of 1967 all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?