Great Meadow: An Evocation (Bloomsbury Reader)

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Paperback Language of Text: Be the first to rate this product Rate this product: His father was the art editor of the Sunday Times, his mother was a former actress, and the family was more than comfortably off. Their home was on the Sussex Downs,and the children seemed to live their lives out of doors, coming home only for practical necessities.

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That included meals and those were reported frequently, and always with loving detail. Which was a particular treat because it was never allowed in the dining room when our parents were there, which seemed a pit because it had a quite interesting picture on it of a very happy father and mother and their children, and the father was smiling like anything and holding the bottle of sauce. That was why it was called Daddies, you see.

We had it cold with clotted cream from the Court Dairy, and it was really pretty good, all sticky and crinkly. They are simple, precise and unsentimental, and they paint pictures beautifully. But they are filtered through an adult understanding. Those moments like that were the smallest of distractions; I was completely captivated by this evocation of an idyllic childhood.

There was little incident — just an occasional visitor, an occasional trip — but young lives were lived. She had been nanny — she still was, even though her charges considered themselves far too grown up for these things — and she kept the household running smoothly. It is to her that this book is dedicated. It is the story of a happy family, in a world that would soon be changed forever by World War II.

The highlight came at Christmas. All gold and silver. Shining in the firelight. The terrible fear that she might die, that she might not be coming back. And the realisation that, loved though she was, she was not one of the family and came from a very different world.

Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde

Everything important in a young life is here, sights, sounds, incidents perfectly recalled more than fifty years after the fact. The result is a lovely little book, with the power to pull you back to another time and place. Aug 17, Wayne rated it it was amazing Shelves: Am lending this to a friend, but as I haven't read it yet myself, I knew it would come in handy for a pleasant light read, having read most of Dirk Bogarde's other autobiographicals.

And ALL with much interest and pleasure And so it is proving Must say I am enjoying it hugely an Am lending this to a friend, but as I haven't read it yet myself, I knew it would come in handy for a pleasant light read, having read most of Dirk Bogarde's other autobiographicals. Must say I am enjoying it hugely and glad to balance it against Joseph Conrad and Albert Camus whose books I am also reading but which cannot be regarded as 'light'!!! And by 'light' I certainly don't mean 'inferior'in any way!!!

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On a World Canvas Hitler hovers in the background as Jewish refugees arrive on their doorstep A new baby brother is born Dirk's sister reflects the mood when she comments how she loves this baby but "wasn't it awful that they had to grow up". Nothing remains the same Dirk is being sent off to a school in Glasgow accompanied by his father's threat: And that the school would give him a decent education "whether he liked it or not.

And Lally, the children's beloved nanny, has expressed the inevitable that her ageing parents will soon be in need of her. It was like the end of the world I just sat with the shadows getting long.

Great Meadow

A Gem of a Book. View all 9 comments. Aug 03, Pippa rated it really liked it Shelves: This is the tale of Dirk Bogarde's rather privileged childhood, just before the outbreak of WW2, told as if he was still that little boy. An elderly lady told me he could have been describing her childhood, and it was her favourite book, for that reason. I could see why. It is beautifully told, and some of the phrases - "a second hand mother," for example, are superb.

You'll have to read it to find out what he meant! It creates a very clear picture, and is a beautiful book. Of Bogarde's biographical works, this one I hadn't read before. It's written in the style of a twelve year old, which gets quite annoying.

As a snippet of a lost way of life it is interesting, but the style does grate somewhat something worth repeating. Re-read after about twenty years and I still love it. The way Bogarde captures the voice of the twelve-year-old is wonderful, really charming, and he brilliantly combines it with that typical nature of childhood memories, where everything blends and blurs and you couldn't tell whether something happened once or a few times or a lot and the memories you evoke to your own mind are more just images and a feeling than anything clear and tangible.

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Re-creating this with words for the reader to experie Re-read after about twenty years and I still love it. Re-creating this with words for the reader to experience is an amazing achievement, to my mind. Stumbled across in a second-hand bookstore, begun and finished that same day. I could not help being reminded of Laurie Lee's "Cider with Rosie" - another memoir of childhood by a man who has an incredible knack for writing events from his past clearly enough for an adult to understand, and yet still coming from the point of view of the child he was. The voices are quite different - Lee's boyhood voice is dreamy and captures the poetry in every moment of his childhood.

Bogard Stumbled across in a second-hand bookstore, begun and finished that same day. Bogarde's voice is more rough-and-tumble, that of a sheltered, somewhat naive young boy on the cusp of a double violent upheaval in his life, in the forms of adolescence and war. I particularly appreciate how he works the world of the grown-ups so seamlessly into his boyhood world - everything from girls cutting their hair short and going to movies on Sundays, to scarlet fever, to miscarriage, to vague rumblings of the Nazi rise to power as the events touch his own life through the knowledge and actions of his parents.

They are recognizable, yet all so vague as the adults try to keep those events out of the children's lives - often failing and leaving the children to cope with both the formless dread that can accompany a child when left with the question of "what is so bad that the adults won't even speak of it? Like Lee, Bogarde also has a real knack for giving us characters that we can connect to and love: Even his distant, often-absent mother and father are humanized, sympathetic and intriguing in his viewpoint, and Lally Lally is so much the focus and center of his childhood world that when she is threatened, the story actually becomes ominous and frightening for the reader.

I will not spoil how it all turns out and good lord, is it a long and frightening ride as things get worse , because although I picked it up because I wanted to read his memoirs of a pre-WWII countryside childhood, the emotional journey with him ending up being just as big a part of this book's appeal. Nov 10, Gerry rated it liked it. Dirk Bogarde quite rightly sub-titles the book on the cover An Evocation.

He remembers a time some 50 years earlier when he was a young boy on the Sussex Downs and the writing is exactly like that of a junior and captures the innocence of a time long gone and before the 20th century's second major conflict. Lally, the nanny, features strongly as does his sister and family in a very pleasant read that takes one away from the stresses and strains of modern living.

About Great Meadow

Bogarde has certainly done well Dirk Bogarde quite rightly sub-titles the book on the cover An Evocation. Bogarde has certainly done well to write the story as though it were related by a youngster for he is writing it with the benefit of hindsight, and with age a better understanding of what actually happened at the time, and therefore the publisher's blurb inside the dust wrapper "seen through the eyes of an innocent shrewd young boy" is perhaps gilding the lily a little - nevertheless none the worse for that.

Jan 17, Michael de Percy rated it really liked it Shelves: