About this ebook
This single volume includes three famous memoirs - Scouse Mouse, Rum, Bum & Concertina and Owning Up, with a new introduction by the author. Scouse Mouse is a funny and frequently touching story of the author's 1930s childhood in a middle-class Liverpudlian household. Rum, Bum & Concertina, the naval equivalent of wine, women and song, describes Melly's National Service as one of the most unlikely naval ratings ever. He becomes an anarchist and connoisseur of Surrealist Art while self-educating himself on some of the wilder shores of love. Once demobbed, Melly comes to London to work in an art gallery, and in Owning Up he describes how he slipped into the world of the jazz revival, revelling in an endless round of pubs, clubs, seedy guest-houses and transport caffs while surrounded by a mad array of musicians, tarts, drunks and arch-eccentrics.
About the author
George Melly was born in 1927. He made his name in the jazz revival scene of the late 40s and 50s, singing with Mick Mulligan's band. In the 60s he became one of the UK's most ubiquitous critics, writers and TV personalities. He has published a great number of books, including four volumes of autobiography: Owning Up (1965), Rum, Bum and Concertina (1977), Scouse Mouse (1984) and Slowing Down (2005). Today he can be found singing with the trumpeter Digby Fairweather. In 2004 he was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC's Jazz Awards.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.