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Fred Urquhart's lively collection of stories deals with life in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and demonstrates his fascination with American culture and its effect on Britain. The title story - a highly amusing satirical novella - presents a young Scotswoman who is desperate to cross the Atlantic as a war bride in order to get to Hollywood, armed with a tartan skirt and a copy of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Other stories portray an eccentric woman who has watched too many films, an American musician who has been luckless in his marriages, and an Edinburgh office where the typists have to cope with a predator. Urquhart takes us to London with a tale of an Aberdeenshire farmer's wife in search of fancy shoes and to occupied Germany, where a horse-loving soldier acquires a wife. In the final piece, two sophisticated women from London find life in the country too much for them. Throughout, Urquhart employs his sharp wit and his unique way with dialogue, creating a gallery of memorable characters.

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9781849211062

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Fred Urquhart (1912-1995) was born in Edinburgh and spent much of his childhood there, where his grandparents lived, and later he worked in an Edinburgh book shop for some years ('my university'). He is best known as a superb short story writer. When he began to write it was the heyday of short story magazines, and this was the only obvious way to earn a living as an author. He spent the war in the north-east of Scotland, a conscientious objector relegated to farm work: his stories of this are agreed to rival Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. But later he went to London, finding the louche world of Soho more to his taste than Edinburgh correctness. Later he lived in the country in a 'happy homosexual marriage' and he did not return to Scotland until 1991, after his partner's death. The Ferret Was Abraham's Daughter (1949) and Jezebel's Dust (1951) are his two great novels of Edinburgh's poorer citizens in wartime. Having admired Fred Urquhart's work for many years, Colin Affleck, a fellow native of Edinburgh, became a friend of his on his return to Scotland in 1991. Urquhart later appointed him as his literary executor. Among Dr Affleck's writings on Urquhart is a study focussing on his short stories, which appeared in British Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-1980 (edited by Dean Baldwin). Dr Affleck is now working on a biography of Urquhart.

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