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This Was My England - The Story of a Childhood (Paperback, New)
Loot Price: R767
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This Was My England - The Story of a Childhood (Paperback, New)
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Few books evoke the private life of an era, as it was in England
between 1935 and 1954, with such clarity, as this autobiography.
And it is only through such an intimate memoir that the hidden
aspects of an age - so often lost to future generations - may be
revealed as social history. It comprises the "confession" of a
prolific author, with all his thoughts and feelings, and no attempt
to conceal his faults or failings. Whilst his happiest memories
were as an evacuee at his grandparents' home in Wiltshire, his
return to the dreaded London home brought brutal corporal
punishment and periods of misery in a rigidly religious
environment. But on being sent to a well-established boarding
school, he went unknowingly from the frying pan to the fire, where
he endured horrifying ritual torture and permanent physical
injuries. He subsequently went to a North London public school, and
although was never to be bullied again, was witness to, and partly
implicated in anti-Semitism as a pre-teenager at the time of the
British-Israeli conflict in Palestine. He was to complete his
formal education in a liberal co-educational school in Hampstead
under the inspiration and sound values of a brilliant teaching
staff. During his mid-teenage years, he was involved in a hopeless
and self-destructive love for a film star, eventually leading to
gestures - if not attempts - at suicide and murder, and this led
inevitably to the disruption of his formal academic achievement.
The psychological crisis led to a split between two sides of his
family as to his future direction at the end of full-time
education. The book could not have been written unless the author
had kept a detailed journal and diaries which were recovered from
an attic, and read for the first time after a period of 60 years.
The narrative which is filled with humour and ironic observations,
and a host of colourful characters, concludes with a description of
his life in an old-established solicitors' office. It is only in
these final chapters, prior to National Service, that he began to
regain his sanity.
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