EBook First childhood dementia
By now I have read enough childhood memoirs to have considerable difficulty rating them I need a different kind of scale This was a well written sometimes humorous recollection of an interesting childhood with odd family members and dynamics My only quibble is that for me it is not so memorable I can t explain why that is Rating a memoir feels too close to rating someone s life I wish there was a better way 9780753809464 Any man who let his horse run free in his living room is a friend of mine Lord Berners is the last of the great British eccentrics So out there he could be a character in a PG Wodehouse novel or story But alas he is a real man and an incredible writer The fact that he s so unknown is a crime against literature This is his memoir of his childhood already gay and with a zest for life Essential reading for those who have dull lives 9780753809464 Fluid witty easy going the talented and eccentric Lord Berners delivers these reminiscences of childhood and early schooldays with quiet charm and vitality One critic notes that the book is alive with unforgotten terrors and unforgiven indignities but one could add a few juvenile triumphs too as well as the occasional regret If only after a first cigarette on a dormitory roof when the older boy of his dreams leant forward to fold him in his arms he hadn t thrown up Privileged of course and set in the 1890s but the anecdotes and observations are fairly timeless Here s a headmaster encouraging tolerance and respect Boys he said There are two new comers this term who are a different creed to the rest of you One of them is a Roman Catholic the other is a Jew Now boys you are not to allow this fact to make any difference to your treatment of themit is through no fault of their own that they have had the misfortune to be born into families who are not Protestants and in the case of one of them not even Christians You must behave to them with kindness and courtesy You must forget that in bygone days Roman Catholics used to make a practice of burning Protestants at the stake and that the other boy belongs to the race that crucified Our Lord And here s a memory of a maths teacher I have recently discovered an English musical critic whose name cannot be mentioned as he is unfortunately still alivewho is an almost perfect replica of the Mathematical master at ElmleyThere was the same anaemic earnestness the same superior disparagement of things that escaped his comprehension the same milk and water voice upon which a University twang lay like a thin layer of vinegar First Childhood is not going to make you howl with literary adulation it s too lightweight for that but it was a pleasure to read 9780753809464 First Childhood is an obscure funny and strangely compelling memoir of the author s Victorian childhood There s no real arc it s just a series of memories of his life as a born misfit in a family obsessed with appearances and fox hunting Lord Berners went on to be a noted eccentric and about as openly gay as you could be in the early 20th Century so it s not surprising his anti establishment tendencies are on display from his youngest days His ability to write about his homosexuality is a marvel of plausible deniability and his witty irreverence is the highlight of the book From a chapter entitled The Bible Throwing Incident I was not sufficiently cultured to be able to appreciate the beauties of biblical language and the numerous copies of the Bible that my grandmother had thrust into my reluctant hands had been all of them cheap ill bound editions The ugly common bindings the villainous print and the double columns were not calculated to arouse sthetic interest while the rigid numbering of the verses seemed to impart an unpleasantly didactic tone to the contents Having been told that the book had been written by God himself I often wondered why One who had shown himself in most respects lavish to the point of extravagance should have been so economical in the presentation of his literary efforts to the public 9780753809464 This memoir of Lord Berners early life is highly engaging and entertaining His wit is evident and his shrewd analysis into the motivation and behaviour of others is very insightful 9780753809464
Autobiographical accounts of Victorian childhood tend to fall into one of two camps life was either golden or it closely resembled something straight out of the Bront sisters Gerald Tyrwhitt a.
EPub First childhood obesity a the 14th Baron Berners was an unusual memoirist for his day and age chiefly because he eschewed both nostalgia and sentimentality preferring instead to depict his youth in wry frequently hilarious terms Berners has been called the last eccentric and indeed in his adult life he would have given Auntie Mame a run for her money Although this book ends with Berners s teetering on the verge of adolescence it serves as prelude to the life that would follow already the future baron was enamoured of art and dismal at sport a situation frowned upon by the fox hunting grouse shooting cricket loving upper classes into which he was born Sent away to school at the age of six he soon became aware of an even frowned upon proclivity an attraction to other boys Berners relates the events of his early life with humor and dash who knew that the life of a prepubescent boy could be so entertaining First ChildhoodAvailable at Open Library 9780753809464 Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt Wilson 14th Baron Berners was an English composer novelist painter and aesthete as well as an accomplished eccentric.k.
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