Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood

In 1960s Birmingham, Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes, with her haphazard mother rarely cooking and her father spending money they didn't have on cars, suits, and shoes. Despite this, Kit discovered a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 18 August 2022
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse, and childminder sometimes all at once, and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim, and splurged money they didn't have on cars, suits, and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.

Caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean, and British in 1960s Birmingham, Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars, and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.

Without Warning and Only Sometimes is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in a house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

Weight: 482g
Dimension: 144 x 223 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472284839