This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Many readers will remember some of Bason's contributions to the Saturday Book. I just looked up my correspondence file and found several long, rambly, but still interesting letters in which Bason offered to sell me all manner of books, alas, none medical. I wound up by getting a set of his diaries.
Fred Bason is a strange phenomenon, a Cockney diarist who has made a number of contributions to the Saturday Book, and has published 4 separate books of selections from his diaries. He tells in a fresh and spritely style, hewing fairly close to the Cockney vernacular, at least I guess so, of his interesting existence as an itinerant seller of secondhand books who wandered far and wide throughout his native London buying books as bargains and selling them for a small profit. He had 2 passions. One was to collect autographs. The other was to eke out enough