And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Blake Morrison's memoir chronicles his relationship with his father Arthur Morrison, a rural Yorkshire doctor, during both childhood and his father's final weeks of life. The narrative moves between past and present as Morrison reconstructs memories and encounters with his complex, larger-than-life parent. The book examines the dynamics between father and son through key moments: family holidays, teenage conflicts, medical emergencies in their village, and shared car journeys. Morrison documents his attempts to understand his father's character and motivations while questioning the reliability of his own memories and perceptions. At its core, this memoir explores universal themes about parent-child relationships, the nature of truth in memory, and how we come to terms with mortality. The work stands as a meditation on what it means to truly know another person, especially someone as close yet mysterious as a parent.

Readers connect with Morrison's raw honesty in examining his complex relationship with his father, particularly during his father's final illness. Many note how the book captures universal experiences of parent-child dynamics and grief. Readers highlight: - The detailed observations of family life - The balance between past and present narratives - The exploration of memory's reliability - The unflinching look at difficult emotions Common criticisms: - Some sections feel repetitive - The non-linear timeline can be confusing - A few readers found Morrison's tone self-absorbed Review Scores: Goodreads: 3.8/5 (1,500+ ratings) Amazon UK: 4.2/5 (100+ reviews) Amazon US: 4/5 (50+ reviews) Notable reader comments: "Captures perfectly that moment when we realize our parents are human" - Goodreads reviewer "Too much navel-gazing and not enough focus on the father" - Amazon reviewer

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🔖 The memoir was adapted into a critically acclaimed film in 2007, starring Colin Firth as Blake Morrison and Jim Broadbent as his father. 📚 Blake Morrison wrote much of the book while his father was still alive and dying of cancer, creating an unusual immediacy and rawness to the narrative. 🎓 The book's title comes from a famous Victorian painting by William Frederick Yeames, depicting a Royalist boy being interrogated by Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. 🏆 The memoir won the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and helped establish Morrison as a pioneer of the contemporary British memoir movement. 💫 Morrison's portrayal of his complex relationship with his father influenced a wave of similar father-son memoirs in British literature during the 1990s and beyond.