Blake Morrison

Adam Mars-Jones M y mother was born on 20 August 1923 and christened Sheila Mary Felicity Cobon. At some stage she was told the supposed meaning of these names, or looked them up in a book. Her forenames meant by dérivation Blind Bitter Happiness. As an adult Sheila found this augury ruefully...

This is Blake Morrison's memoir of his father, Dr Arthur Morrison. It shows a son asking who his father really was. Was he the man seen through a seven-year-old's eyes, jumping queues, or the sexual charmer seen by a 17-year-old? Or was he the figure, so hard to recognize, on his death-bed?

In his acclaimed and much-loved memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? Blake Morrison's mother remains a mysterious, shadowy figure. One of the many things that Kim Morrison never told her son was that she was born Agnes O'Shea, one of twenty children in an Irish family; he barely met his...