Nell Dunn

In 1964, Nell Dunn spoke to nine of her friends over a bottle of wine about men, sex, work, money, babies, freedom and love. Novelist Edna O'Brien remembers being 'very frightened' of having her nipples touched. The Pop Artist Pauline Boty says she got married to the 'first man I could talk very freely to'. Kathy Collier, who Dunn worked with in ......

Talking to Women

Portrays scenes of London life in the early sixties in the industrial slums of Battersea, witnessing clipjoint hustles, candid sexual encounters, casual birth, and casual death. Reprint.

Up the Junction

With Drawings by Susan Benson

Poor Cow

Adrian Henri

I Want

First published in 1967, this novel tells the story of Joy living amongst the shiftless poor in London. Her life is made tolerable by her love for her child. Nell Dunn is the author of "Up the Junction" which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and the play and film "Steaming".

Nell Dunn interviewed ten grandmothers, all from different social backgrounds, and talked to them about what it feels like to be a grandmother and what it felt like to be a grandchild. The interviewees range from Ursula, who lives in a country house, to Joy, who lives on a council estate.

Grandmothers Talking Nell

Grandmothers Talking to Nell Dunn

Grandmothers, Talking to Nell Dunn

Steaming

Grandmothers

A Simple Story of Heaven and Hell

The Only Child

Joy - also called Blossom, Sunshine and Blondie by the men in her life - walks down Fulham Broadway carrying her week-old baby, Jonny. She is twenty-one, with bleached hair, high suede shoes, and a head full of dreams. Her husband Tom is a thief and on the proceeds of a job they move to a luxury flat - 'the world was our oyster and we chose Ruislip'. Then Tom is sent to prison, leaving Joy and Jonny to move in with Auntie Emm. This is Joy's story: an exuberant, pink-lipsticked, tale of London life, love and young motherhood in the sixties...

A Virago Modern Classic

The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos, think about new frocks on H.P., drink tea in the cafe, and talk about their boyfriends. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in the shabby parts of South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can.

Up The Junction

True Stories

Cancer Tales

Nobody writes like Nell Dunn... always communally, with rare honesty, with love, and with calm and ground-breaking understanding... It's glorious. Ali Smith The Muse is all it could be; an act of sharing that goes beyond particular experience to take us to a happy realm of natural sisterhood. TLS Nell Dunn has perfect pitch for the words we use and for the loves and mysteries of the human heart. Carmen Callil Defiant, funny and exhilarating. The Muse is so high-spirited and full of a sense of adventure. Margaret Drabble This slim volume is entertaining... You long to know more about Nell's life Daily Mail The Muse is the story of a life-changing friendship. It starts with Nell's account of a chance meeting with Josie at the age of 22. Josie teaches her how to live for moment, how to have adventures and find the sweetness of life even in hardship. This was the Sixties, a time of literary and sexual experimentation, of the breakdown of old barriers and inhibitions Even as she was hooking up with dodgy men, Josie always carried herself like a star, and as the inspiration for the ground-breaking novel of working class women Poor Cow and the play Steaming - both of which were made into movies - she became one, feted by producers on Broadway. Life is the thing, was Josie's motto. But where would her philosophy of taking no care for tomorrow lead her? In prose of unique clarity and simplicity that always gets straight to the heart of matter, The Muse follows this friendship over the decades.

Nell Dunn

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