Wemmick’s Aged Parent in Dickens’s Great Expectations, beaming by the fire and enjoying his son’s jovial banter despite being stone deaf, remains the template for a contented and cared-for old age. But we read few such scenarios today. We read only of the high cost of care, the scarcity of carers and a post-pandemic picture of locked-down loneliness.
‘Who cares?’ has become a huge question. Richard Bates, having cared for his own father, has edited a collection of carers’ tales, Who Cares?: The Joys and Challenges of Unpaid Carers. Most unpaid carers are spouses or offspring and Bates asked a dozen of them to write their stories.
They are rivetingly candid. They tell tales of small tyrannies, bathroom horrors, mulish sulks and nocturnal needs, twice as demanding as child-rearing. But also of the gratifying aftermath: guilt assuaged, duty fulfilled.
Diana and George Melly, the ebullient jazz musician and writer,
