The Broken Boy - Softcover

Cockburn, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009945923X ISBN 13: 9780099459231

Publisher: Vintage, 2006

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.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

Review:

"Charming, interesting and moving by turn" (Anthony Daniels Sunday Telegraph)

"Engrossing... an often perceptive genre-defying gem...engaging and entertaining" (Tom Adair 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)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 009945923X
• ISBN 13: 9780099459231
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336