Tom Shone’s Curdling Embarassment

This is a gem of a book. I can’t think of another that captures so well the livid warmth, later curdling into embarrassment, that characterizes the jejune, impassioned and borderline-pretentious tastes with which we first find, and then lose, ourselves; and it comes illuminated with an adult’s forgiving fondness for the cultural Mussolinis we once were, age 15.