The Broken Boy

Patrick Cockburn

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Published by Vintage Digital, part of Vintage Publishing

Epub

Format: ebook

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Details

EAN: 9781409018599
Published: 4 May 2008

About the book

Synopsis

It is very easy to get polio. Patrick Cockburn was six when he woke up one day in the summer of 1956 with a headache and a sore throat. His parents, Claud and Patricia Cockburn, had recently returned to Ireland, to their house in East Cork, careless of the fact that a polio epidemic had broken out in Cork City. He caught the disease and was taken to the fever hospital. The virus attacks the nerves of the brain and the spinal cord leading to paralysis of the muscles. Patrick could no longer walk.

The Broken Boy is at once a memoir of Patrick Cockburn's own experience of polio, a portrait of his parents, both prominent radicals, and the story of the Cork epidemic, the last great polio epidemic in the world.

Press

What the critics say

Charming, interesting and moving by turn
- Sunday Telegraph

Engrossing... an often perceptive genre-defying gem...engaging and entertaining
- Scotland on Sunday

This is wonderful writing...Brilliant...Cockburn has pulled off something remarkable
- Observer

The best journalist's autobiography to appear for years... This is a story of endurance and a hugely adventurous mind, elegantly told
- Evening Standard

Sad and entertaining, and altogether evocative of a vanished Ireland
- Sunday Times

'Engaging and witty...Oddly uplifting'
- Guardian

A deeply absorbing account... Clear-eyed, laconic, unsentimental
- Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

Entrhalling... A treasure chest of anecdotes
- Independent on Sunday

This is a gentle, uncomplaining story written with affection and insight
- Mail on Sunday