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Underwhelmist born in Manchester after breakfast, but before lunch. Experienced ennui by teatime. Dives between Middle East and North of England/ South of Scotland. Interested in all things Middle Eastern and a few other things as well.
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Reviews (1)
06 May, 2019
Well-written, but simultaneously frustrating at the lack of evidence.
This is an incredibly well-written and at the same time frustrating memoir. Mr. Daly is describing his brief period in 1975 working in Foyle's Bookshop in London during the day, and working the Meat-Rack by night, describing an underworld network of gangsterism revolving around slot machines, rent boys and the rich and famous. It is a riveting read- takes two sittings to get through all 363 pages but unfortunately Mr. Daly has conducted original research in the course of preparing the manuscript making it difficult to tell where his memory ends and original research as begun. The usual UK establishment names crop-up as closeted homosexuals if not out-and-out paedophiles: Havers, Hayman, Oldfield, Keith Joseph etc and the same locations are trotted out such as Dolphin Square, Kincora etc. If you're a follower of the recent UK-Irish sex scandals from Kincora to Savile and all points in between there is little contained herein that you didn't already know or at least suspect.
Without doing down Mr. Daly's experiences, or even his achievement with this book, the real story begins in the third part (Page 285) where all the strands of his sorrowful and occasionally touching tale suddenly make sense- the Playland trial, the cover-up, the gangsters, the arcade machine giants (Sega) and how they were/ are interlinked that I can't help feeling a trick has been missed here with this book.
Nevertheless it is still well worth a read, and hopefully can act as a springboard for further researches into an undoubtedly murky area of UK-Irish History.