Cultural References
Birkenhead is mentioned in the song "What She Said" on the album Meat Is Murder by The Smiths: What she read/All heady books/She'd sit and prophesise/(It took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead/To really really open her eyes).
The town is also referred to in the song "Everything Is Sorrow" on the Boo Radleys' C'mon Kids album: I worked in Birkenhead for you/It brings me tears even now.
A fairly detailed description of the town is given in Paul O'Grady's memoirs, At My Mother's Knee ... and Other Low Joints: The Autobiography.
Birkenhead is indirectly referenced by "the Birken'ead drill" in Rudyard Kipling's poem "Soldier an' Sailor Too": To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about, / Is nothing so bad when you've cover to 'and, an' leave an' likin' to shout; / But to stand an' be still to the Birken'ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew, / An' they done it, the Jollies -- 'Er Majesty's Jollies -- soldier an' sailor too!, as it refers to heroism by Royal Marines during the sinking of HMS Birkenhead, itself named after the town in which it was built. Other authors have done this as well.
Read more about this topic: Birkenhead
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising true masculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven’t been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren’t being manly enough.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)