Thinking about WG Sebald's Manchester in the Max Ferber section of The Emigrants.
This is the closest I get in literature to the time and place of my birth in Manchester at the end of the 60s. On arrival Sebald travels through Didsbury on his way to his lodgings. Did he pass the place of my birth? He writes of dour, grey days in a decaying city long since past its best, his only solace a teas-made with its reassuring lime green fluorescent clock face.
Max Ferber is based on Frank Auerbach, who was put on a plane to England at the start of the war by his parents who were deported a few years later and died in the camps.
