In her assured and perceptive first book essayist and critic Catherine Taylor reminds us that hers is “a typical family and an ordinary story, although neither the story or the family seems commonplace when it is your family and your story” and strikes at the heart of what autobiography does.
Though Taylor was born in New Zealand, her life is moulded by South Yorkshire after she moves there as a child. Upon arrival, “Sheffield was grey, grim and wet” but the Tinsley cooling towers rising into view from the M1 soon become “a welcome sign of home”. The Stirrings takes its title from the local nickname given to the Sheffield Outrages of the 1860s; a series of explosions and murders by trade union militants from the metal trades, an extreme, violent response to poor wages and the lack of protection for workers using new machinery. Despite being immortalised in a play by local writer Allen Cullen, the outrages are not particularly well known on a national level and perhaps it is surprising they do not get more coverage here either. But by referring to them, Taylor establishes Sheffield as a city with a reputation for direct action and implies that this has shaped the character of its residents, including herself. Her writing often examines what it means to be (rightly) outraged, the line between fear (or being “frit”) and rebellion.
