In Northumberland I reread ‘Goodbye to All That’ by Robert Graves, in an old Penguin paperback with a wraparound cover of a mud-brown John Nash painting.
A delight, endlessly entertaining. Graves has polished his anecdotes till they gleam like pebbles in a stream, sparkling with his dry sense of humour, a shining eye for detail, and his crisp, clear, modern prose. The same style which makes ‘I, Claudius’ and his other novels so compelling, so damn readable.
The first 50 pages are about his childhood and miserable schooling at Charterhouse; the final 50 about his subsistence as a poor, hastily married poet living outside Oxford; the middle 150 pages about his lengthy Great War service. By the end of the book you can understand why he was thoroughly sick of England and all its values and keen to flee to Majorca, where he spent the rest of his life.
Books & Boots 