By William Boyd for the New Statesman. I was seventeen when 1969 became 1970 so, logically and irrefutably, I had lived through the so-called Swinging Sixties. I do remember going to a discotheque in London when I was sixteen, called Samantha’s, I think, and dancing around a white e-type Jaguar in the middle of the […]
By William Boyd for the Guardian. In the summer of 1968 I was sixteen years old and, in retrospect, those months appear significant for me only because I had sat my “O” level examinations, all eleven of them, and was waiting apprehensively for the results. Consequently, the rest of the summer of ’68 remains something […]
Three Doctors, A Dentist And A Nurse By William Boyd Back in 1971, during my first year at university (in Glasgow), aged 19, I began to suffer from debilitating headaches. They would come and go at random, while I was eating lunch, sitting in a lecture theatre, walking back to my hall of residence. They […]
By William Boyd March 16th was when we – I and my wife, Susan — decided to go into self-imposed lockdown, a full week ahead of this narrenschiff of a government. At first it seemed a daunting prospect. When our local restaurant closed its doors I remember the manager saying, “See you in three weeks”. […]