Page 14 - Real Rochdale Issue 13 Spring 2022

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy

Memoirs Of A Working-Class Reader

ark Hodkinson grew up among the
terrace houses of Rochdale in a house
Mwith just one book.

Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher.
He still lives in Rochdale but is now snugly
ensconced (or is that buried?) in a ‘book cave’
surrounded by 3,500 titles – at the last count.

‘No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy’ is Mark’s
story of growing up a working-class lad during the
1970s and 1980s. It’s about schools (bad), music
(good) and the people (some mad, a few sane),
and pre-eminently and profoundly the books and
authors (some bad, mostly good) that led the way,
and shaped his life. It’s also about a family who
just didn’t see the point of reading, and a troubled
grandad who, in his own way, taught Mark the
power of stories.

In recounting his own life-long love affair with
books, Mark also tells the story of how writing
and reading has changed over the last five
decades, starting with the wave of working-class
writers in the 1950s and ‘60s, where he saw
himself reflected in books for the first time.

Mark Hodkinson has written for The Times
for two decades, three years as a columnist.
He has also contributed to the Observer,
Guardian, Mail on Sunday and others. He is the
author of ‘Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead
Men with Manchester City’, which is regularly
cited as a football classic, and ‘Believe in the Sign’,
which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports
Book of the Year. His novels include ‘The Last
Mad Surge of Youth’, which was nominated as Q’s
Novel of the Year, and ‘That Summer Feeling’.

He owns Pomona Books and has published titles
by Simon Armitage, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan,
Ray Gosling, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and
Sebastian), Bob Stanley (of Saint Etienne) and
many more. He also commissioned and edited the
much-acclaimed biography J.D. Salinger: A Life,
which was made into a film starring
Nicholas Hoult.

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