What do you think?
Rate this book
A Cab at the Door
A Cab at the Door, originally published in 1968, recalls his childhood in turn-of-the-century and World War I London with the urbane subtlety and wry humor that have marked his other works. For the wild and eccentric Pritchett family, life is a series of cabs waiting at the door to transport them to a succession of ten-bob-a-week lodgings, in their flight from creditors and the financial disasters of their father. It also captures the texture and color of the working class side of Edwardian England. Midnight Oil (which Wilfrid Sheed called a 'little Rolls Royce of a book' when it came out in 1972) opens in 1921: with L20 in his pocket, Pritchett arrives in Paris to commence a literary career. Gradually, his creative sensibilities emerge as he travels as a reporter to Ireland, Spain, and America. Midnight Oil provides an intimate and precise record of a writer's discovery of himself and his art.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
5 people are currently reading
305 people want to read
About the author
V.S. Pritchett
158 books72 followersVictor Sawdon Pritchett was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (née Martin). His father, a London businessman in financial difficulties, had come to Ipswich to start a shop selling newspapers and stationery. The business was struggling and the couple were lodging over a toyshop at 41 St Nicholas Street where Pritchett was born on 16 December 1900. Beatrice had expected a girl, whom she planned to name after the Queen. Pritchett never liked his first name, which is why he always styled himself with his initials; even close friends would call him VSP.
Pritchett's father was a steady Christian Scientist and unsteady in all else. Walter and Beatrice had come to Ipswich to be near her sister who had married money and lived in Warrington Road. Within a year Walter was declared bankrupt, the family moved to Woodford, Essex, then to Derby, and he began selling women's clothing and accessories as a travelling salesman. Pritchett was soon sent with his brother Cyril to live with their paternal grandparents in Sedbergh, where the boys attended their first school. Walter's business failures, his casual attitude to credit, and his easy deceit obliged the family to move frequently. The family was reunited but life was always precarious; they tended to live in London suburbs with members of Beatrice's family. They returned to Ipswich in 1910, living for a year near Cauldwell Hall Road, trying to evade Walter's creditors. At this time Pritchett attended St. John's School. Subsequently Pritchett attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Dulwich College but he stayed nowhere for very long. When his father went to fight in World War I, Pritchett left school. Later in the war Walter turned his hand to aircraft design, of which he knew nothing, and his later ventures included art needlework, property speculation, and faith healing.
Pritchett was a leather buyer from 1916 to 1920, when he moved to Paris, where he worked as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for the Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for the paper and for the New Statesman, which later appointed him literary editor.
Pritchett's first book described his journey across Spain (Marching Spain 1928) and Clare Drummer (1929) was about his experiences in Ireland. Whilst in Ireland he met his first wife, Evelyn Vigors, but it was not to be a happy marriage.
Pritchett published five novels but he claimed not to enjoy their creation. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories (The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1932)).
In 1936 he divorced his first wife, and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts; they had two children. The marriage lasted until Pritchett's death, although they both had other relationships. His son is the journalist Oliver Pritchett and his grandson (son of Oliver) is the cartoonist Matt Pritchett.
During World War II Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information whilst continuing to submit a weekly essay to the New Statesman. After the war he wrote widely and he started taking teaching positions at universities in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. He was fluent in German, Spanish, and French, and published successful biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977) and Anton Chekhov (1988), although he did not know Russian and had never visited the Soviet Union.
Pritchett was knighted in 1975 for his services to literature and became Companion of Honour in 1993. His awards include Heinemann Award (1969), PEN Award (1974), W.H. Smith Literary Award (1990), and Golden Pen Award (1993). He died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Pr...
Pritchett's father was a steady Christian Scientist and unsteady in all else. Walter and Beatrice had come to Ipswich to be near her sister who had married money and lived in Warrington Road. Within a year Walter was declared bankrupt, the family moved to Woodford, Essex, then to Derby, and he began selling women's clothing and accessories as a travelling salesman. Pritchett was soon sent with his brother Cyril to live with their paternal grandparents in Sedbergh, where the boys attended their first school. Walter's business failures, his casual attitude to credit, and his easy deceit obliged the family to move frequently. The family was reunited but life was always precarious; they tended to live in London suburbs with members of Beatrice's family. They returned to Ipswich in 1910, living for a year near Cauldwell Hall Road, trying to evade Walter's creditors. At this time Pritchett attended St. John's School. Subsequently Pritchett attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Dulwich College but he stayed nowhere for very long. When his father went to fight in World War I, Pritchett left school. Later in the war Walter turned his hand to aircraft design, of which he knew nothing, and his later ventures included art needlework, property speculation, and faith healing.
Pritchett was a leather buyer from 1916 to 1920, when he moved to Paris, where he worked as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for the Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for the paper and for the New Statesman, which later appointed him literary editor.
Pritchett's first book described his journey across Spain (Marching Spain 1928) and Clare Drummer (1929) was about his experiences in Ireland. Whilst in Ireland he met his first wife, Evelyn Vigors, but it was not to be a happy marriage.
Pritchett published five novels but he claimed not to enjoy their creation. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories (The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1932)).
In 1936 he divorced his first wife, and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts; they had two children. The marriage lasted until Pritchett's death, although they both had other relationships. His son is the journalist Oliver Pritchett and his grandson (son of Oliver) is the cartoonist Matt Pritchett.
During World War II Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information whilst continuing to submit a weekly essay to the New Statesman. After the war he wrote widely and he started taking teaching positions at universities in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. He was fluent in German, Spanish, and French, and published successful biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977) and Anton Chekhov (1988), although he did not know Russian and had never visited the Soviet Union.
Pritchett was knighted in 1975 for his services to literature and became Companion of Honour in 1993. His awards include Heinemann Award (1969), PEN Award (1974), W.H. Smith Literary Award (1990), and Golden Pen Award (1993). He died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Pr...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 2, 2013
Words cannot describe how wonderful this book is. V.S Pritchett's memoirs of growing up in Edwardian England with a let's put it charitably, rather eccentric businessman father always on the run from creditors is filled to the brim with hilarious and sad at times,incidents at school/work and play. He has an uncanny knack and I might add unique ability with portraits of his family relations/workmates human foibles not the least of which was his father's mid-life conversion to Christian Science. Utterly fascinating and highly recommended, this review can't come close to doing this book justice.
April 12, 2014
Been back and forth about this book. There are interesting bits in it, about Christian Science (Victor's father was a devotee), about the leather trade and life in industrial London - but on the whole, this book centers around family strife and the very complicated/claustrophobic relationship V. has with his father. I don't think I've ever before read an autobiography in which the author was so difficult to like. It left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I will say that the writing was excellent.
I will say that the writing was excellent.
February 17, 2023
"Looking back with a fine sense of the comic and serene delight in the extravagant and funny people who filled his world.” Delicious writing. (6 pages of copied extracts) Source material for 1951’s Mr. Beluncle,
Notes:
5 At 22, my young father was affronted and flabbergasted to find he was bankrupt.
8 A strain of truculence and insubordination running thru our family.
36 Haworth. Monosyllabic talkers but their silences concealed strong passions that lasted for life, whether that passion was love or hatred.
55 When one falls in love with a face, the reason may be that one saw such a face, perhaps of an old woman, that excited one in childhood. I always give a second look at any woman with Aunt Lax’s eyebrows and lizard-like face.
76 By what right did these two grownup animals have these consuming battles … keep us out of them, ignore us … Intolerable Father had gone bankrupt again.
91 I was not as clever as many boys, but I felt I was clever enough and egotistical enough to do what I like with my life.
98 We were shocked. Mother was jealous. … But Father hated women. His favorite gesture, holding up his hand palm outward, and wag it insultingly up and down, silently telling them to shut up.
102 First day of school. No one else had our dark adventures. We were a race apart, abnormal but proud of our stripes, longing for the normality we saw around us.
111 The toff wore a monocle.
118 Lawsuit lost. “He’s a fighter.” Mother said with pride, but also in terror. ($$$)
141 Mother cringed at his recklessness, and prayed for him to get a safe job.
150 I concealed my desire to be a writer by saying that I wanted to be a schoolmaster.
167 Father had a natural attraction to all quacks and to any crank—outside the political—who was mellifluous. … artful alliteration’s awful aid
191 My work was dull … simple and mechanical … far, far less difficult than work at school. Most people seemed chained to a dulling routine of systematized and tolerated carelessness and error.
200 People in the leather trade knew more about literature than I did. Flaubert, Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Locke, Hardy, Bennett …
215 Mother threw the goose onto the floor this Christmas lunchtime, shouting “There it is. Eat it.” … hysterical scream. We were a problem. I was lying. Brother and sister were helpless stammerers.
223 Neighbor Frank, a fellow recalcitrant … The whole of England makes you sick. I hate the English. … We used to go on long hate-walks.
237 Once more our Micawber had become a disarming borrower and was encumbered by debts.
238 Profile of Father
240 Barrie “When a Man’s Single”, art of writing short sketches. Taught H.G. Wells how to write.
Notes:
5 At 22, my young father was affronted and flabbergasted to find he was bankrupt.
8 A strain of truculence and insubordination running thru our family.
36 Haworth. Monosyllabic talkers but their silences concealed strong passions that lasted for life, whether that passion was love or hatred.
55 When one falls in love with a face, the reason may be that one saw such a face, perhaps of an old woman, that excited one in childhood. I always give a second look at any woman with Aunt Lax’s eyebrows and lizard-like face.
76 By what right did these two grownup animals have these consuming battles … keep us out of them, ignore us … Intolerable Father had gone bankrupt again.
91 I was not as clever as many boys, but I felt I was clever enough and egotistical enough to do what I like with my life.
98 We were shocked. Mother was jealous. … But Father hated women. His favorite gesture, holding up his hand palm outward, and wag it insultingly up and down, silently telling them to shut up.
102 First day of school. No one else had our dark adventures. We were a race apart, abnormal but proud of our stripes, longing for the normality we saw around us.
111 The toff wore a monocle.
118 Lawsuit lost. “He’s a fighter.” Mother said with pride, but also in terror. ($$$)
141 Mother cringed at his recklessness, and prayed for him to get a safe job.
150 I concealed my desire to be a writer by saying that I wanted to be a schoolmaster.
167 Father had a natural attraction to all quacks and to any crank—outside the political—who was mellifluous. … artful alliteration’s awful aid
191 My work was dull … simple and mechanical … far, far less difficult than work at school. Most people seemed chained to a dulling routine of systematized and tolerated carelessness and error.
200 People in the leather trade knew more about literature than I did. Flaubert, Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Locke, Hardy, Bennett …
215 Mother threw the goose onto the floor this Christmas lunchtime, shouting “There it is. Eat it.” … hysterical scream. We were a problem. I was lying. Brother and sister were helpless stammerers.
223 Neighbor Frank, a fellow recalcitrant … The whole of England makes you sick. I hate the English. … We used to go on long hate-walks.
237 Once more our Micawber had become a disarming borrower and was encumbered by debts.
238 Profile of Father
240 Barrie “When a Man’s Single”, art of writing short sketches. Taught H.G. Wells how to write.
June 18, 2023
I love the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library and enjoy just wandering around looking up titles that are hard to locate anywhere else. This is one of them and it’s a great example of why it’s worth reading books by authors who most people have never heard of – writers whose books have been out of print for years.
V.S. Pritchett was an English writer who lived from 1900 until 1997. He’s known mostly for his short stories, literary criticism and travel writing but I’ve never read any of his books until I stumbled across this one - the first of his two memoirs.
His was a colorful and chaotic childhood, and his memoir is filled with vivid examples of what it was like growing up in a working-class family in Edwardian London. But the family wasn’t just scrimping to get by, it was continually on the run from creditors and the consequences of the many outlandish schemes Pritchett’s father was constantly dreaming up which inevitably led to financial disaster and the need to pick up and move to a new place to live. For the family life became a series of dashing off in cabs that were waiting at the door to take them from one cheap lodging house to another.
Pritchett describes his family’s misfortunes as well as the spirit of adventure that accompanied them with zest and a great deal of humor. Unlike many contemporary memoirs, written by embittered people who seem reluctant to let go of the pain they suffered as children and the impact it had on them, Pritchett tells his story honestly but without giving in to pessimism or judging his parents harshly for their shortcomings. He doesn’t shy away from describing the family’s misfortunes brought about by his vain and irresponsible father, but he does so without being mean-spirited or vindictive.
Perhaps it was his love of literature that provided him with a way to deal with the family’s various eccentricities and disasters. From an early age he wanted to become a writer and even used to pray that he would be a poet laureate by age 21. That never happened but his flair for telling a good story is evident in his memoir which is filled with the kind of characters Charles Dickens would have been proud to have invented. And while his book is clearly based on his memories of what it was like to grow up in an eccentric family, we can only suspect that the storyteller in him had a free hand in embellishing some of the details, because as he himself admits: “The only certainty is that I come from a set of storytellers and moralists and that neither party cared much for the precise. The story tellers were forever changing the tale and the moralists tampering with it in order to put it in an edifying light.”
V.S. Pritchett was an English writer who lived from 1900 until 1997. He’s known mostly for his short stories, literary criticism and travel writing but I’ve never read any of his books until I stumbled across this one - the first of his two memoirs.
His was a colorful and chaotic childhood, and his memoir is filled with vivid examples of what it was like growing up in a working-class family in Edwardian London. But the family wasn’t just scrimping to get by, it was continually on the run from creditors and the consequences of the many outlandish schemes Pritchett’s father was constantly dreaming up which inevitably led to financial disaster and the need to pick up and move to a new place to live. For the family life became a series of dashing off in cabs that were waiting at the door to take them from one cheap lodging house to another.
Pritchett describes his family’s misfortunes as well as the spirit of adventure that accompanied them with zest and a great deal of humor. Unlike many contemporary memoirs, written by embittered people who seem reluctant to let go of the pain they suffered as children and the impact it had on them, Pritchett tells his story honestly but without giving in to pessimism or judging his parents harshly for their shortcomings. He doesn’t shy away from describing the family’s misfortunes brought about by his vain and irresponsible father, but he does so without being mean-spirited or vindictive.
Perhaps it was his love of literature that provided him with a way to deal with the family’s various eccentricities and disasters. From an early age he wanted to become a writer and even used to pray that he would be a poet laureate by age 21. That never happened but his flair for telling a good story is evident in his memoir which is filled with the kind of characters Charles Dickens would have been proud to have invented. And while his book is clearly based on his memories of what it was like to grow up in an eccentric family, we can only suspect that the storyteller in him had a free hand in embellishing some of the details, because as he himself admits: “The only certainty is that I come from a set of storytellers and moralists and that neither party cared much for the precise. The story tellers were forever changing the tale and the moralists tampering with it in order to put it in an edifying light.”
June 4, 2023
4.5*
Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in lodgings over a toy shop in Ipswich at the end of 1900. He was named for Queen Victoria who was dying, his mother Beatrice being a Londoner and a lover of the royal family. His father, Walter, originally from Yorkshire came to Ipswich to start a newsagents and stationery business. A demanding man, Walter was a committed Christian Scientist who had taken to following the American, spiritual pioneer Mrs Eddy - but in everything else he lacked faith and responsibility, and had a precarious relationship with the truth and his family.
A year after arriving in Ipswich, Walter was declared bankrupt. And this was Victor’s childhood - his father would start a new business, they would move to a new town, get to know the neighbours, enrol at a new school, make new friends and then do it all again - in Suffolk, Derby, Yorkshire and London. His education was sporadic but he was an avid reader and developed an early interest in painting and writing. Then came the First World War which he was too young to sign up for, and was instead encouraged by his father to turn to the leather trade, which he loved. The book ends with Victor’s move to Paris for work at the age of 16 and where he stayed for the next seven years. The rest of his story is continued in his memoir, Midnight Oil.
I really enjoyed this book - not least because it is very well written - but also because it starts in Ipswich where he was born at 41 St Nicholas Street, and where he returns aged six with his mother and brother Cyril, a time he calls a "soft and lazy affair with my birthplace" to be near his aunt and cousin who live "in the fashionable end" while they were found lodgings as far away as possible "at the other end" and sent to a "rough school in Cauldwell Hall Road". He also sees the sea for the first time at Felixstowe, watches the steamers on the River Orwell and has his first brushes with literature from his Uncle Bugg's bookshelves which held thousands of books. He calls Ipswich his "peaceful interregnum of his boyhood" and seemed to adore the laid back country life.
One anecdote I also want to remember is the tale he relates of an encounter with a man in London whom he was convinced was Jack the Ripper. Out one day with his young sister, the man talks to Victor and tries to get him to go with him to buy a toy in a toy shop. Just as Victor is pretending to go inside the shop - the man tries to grab his sister -and luckily they manage to runaway.
Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in lodgings over a toy shop in Ipswich at the end of 1900. He was named for Queen Victoria who was dying, his mother Beatrice being a Londoner and a lover of the royal family. His father, Walter, originally from Yorkshire came to Ipswich to start a newsagents and stationery business. A demanding man, Walter was a committed Christian Scientist who had taken to following the American, spiritual pioneer Mrs Eddy - but in everything else he lacked faith and responsibility, and had a precarious relationship with the truth and his family.
A year after arriving in Ipswich, Walter was declared bankrupt. And this was Victor’s childhood - his father would start a new business, they would move to a new town, get to know the neighbours, enrol at a new school, make new friends and then do it all again - in Suffolk, Derby, Yorkshire and London. His education was sporadic but he was an avid reader and developed an early interest in painting and writing. Then came the First World War which he was too young to sign up for, and was instead encouraged by his father to turn to the leather trade, which he loved. The book ends with Victor’s move to Paris for work at the age of 16 and where he stayed for the next seven years. The rest of his story is continued in his memoir, Midnight Oil.
I really enjoyed this book - not least because it is very well written - but also because it starts in Ipswich where he was born at 41 St Nicholas Street, and where he returns aged six with his mother and brother Cyril, a time he calls a "soft and lazy affair with my birthplace" to be near his aunt and cousin who live "in the fashionable end" while they were found lodgings as far away as possible "at the other end" and sent to a "rough school in Cauldwell Hall Road". He also sees the sea for the first time at Felixstowe, watches the steamers on the River Orwell and has his first brushes with literature from his Uncle Bugg's bookshelves which held thousands of books. He calls Ipswich his "peaceful interregnum of his boyhood" and seemed to adore the laid back country life.
One anecdote I also want to remember is the tale he relates of an encounter with a man in London whom he was convinced was Jack the Ripper. Out one day with his young sister, the man talks to Victor and tries to get him to go with him to buy a toy in a toy shop. Just as Victor is pretending to go inside the shop - the man tries to grab his sister -and luckily they manage to runaway.
August 3, 2020
"By the time V. S. Pritchett was twelve, his family had moved eighteen times -- the cab at the door taking them from financial calamity in one neighborhood to fresh hope in the next.
"In this engaging account of his early years Mr Pritchett shows how he grew up, torn between his father, 'a cocksparrow ... walking in and out of jobs with the bumptiousness of a god' and his 'sulky, moody mother, either laughing or in tears'.
A Cab at the Door presents a childhood experience of Edwardian England in which recollection and free comment maintain a dazzling counterpoint."
~~back cover
The author seemed to think that readers would be familiar with Edwardian England, at least enough to appreciate the back and forth descriptions of his grandfather, his great-grandfather, purporting to prove why his father was as he was. All strewn with vignettes of life in whatever town the family happened to wind up in next. Somehow, this just wasn't for me.
"In this engaging account of his early years Mr Pritchett shows how he grew up, torn between his father, 'a cocksparrow ... walking in and out of jobs with the bumptiousness of a god' and his 'sulky, moody mother, either laughing or in tears'.
A Cab at the Door presents a childhood experience of Edwardian England in which recollection and free comment maintain a dazzling counterpoint."
~~back cover
The author seemed to think that readers would be familiar with Edwardian England, at least enough to appreciate the back and forth descriptions of his grandfather, his great-grandfather, purporting to prove why his father was as he was. All strewn with vignettes of life in whatever town the family happened to wind up in next. Somehow, this just wasn't for me.
August 23, 2020
I am not sure how to rate this book. It took some getting into but, eventually, I quite enjoyed it. It’s probably 3.5 but I have been slightly mean. I think my main issue is that it isn’t quite chronological and skips around just enough that you are not quite sure where you are at times.
My younger Grandfather was 10 years older than Pritchett and my father 10 years younger, I recognise some of the world that Pritchett grew up in from their stories. The difference is that they were of that chapel life that his grandfather was part of. They would never have lived beyond their means or gone into debt like Pritchett senior, flitting from house to house to avoid the bailiffs.
My younger Grandfather was 10 years older than Pritchett and my father 10 years younger, I recognise some of the world that Pritchett grew up in from their stories. The difference is that they were of that chapel life that his grandfather was part of. They would never have lived beyond their means or gone into debt like Pritchett senior, flitting from house to house to avoid the bailiffs.
April 25, 2025
A difficult time with his parents, especially his father who was part entrepreneur, part family man, part Christian Scientist and entirely a scammer, led Pritchett to a peripatetic, fitful sort of life with some bad books, some excellent short stories, some middling criticism and this strangely engrossing memoir. The Late Victorians don't seem very far away after reading this - the need to make your own way, the excitement of depending on unreliable parents, the changing urban scenes, it's a panorama of experiences that make up a good read.
Read
August 27, 2021Pritchett’s such a careful, intriguing writer that I took my time read this, his childhood memoir. It’s sad and funny and crazy in the way that families are— and the picture of his domineering, yet strangely helpless, father will stay with me.
December 23, 2019
3.5 stars.
January 24, 2020
Enjoyable read
October 10, 2021
3 1/2- A delightful memoir from a time and place not often explored, mostly gone by the time of the writing in 1968.
January 3, 2014
Aw, now here's a gem.
I got into Pritchett on the back of James Woods' praise (the English Chekhov; much underrated). It reads part Henry Green, part Diary of a Nobody and is warm, self-effacing and superbly well observed. It's also a nifty social document, especially given the young Victor's broad exposure to toughs and toffs alike. I've only read a handful of his short stories and I'm now an eager convert. Well worth a look.
I got into Pritchett on the back of James Woods' praise (the English Chekhov; much underrated). It reads part Henry Green, part Diary of a Nobody and is warm, self-effacing and superbly well observed. It's also a nifty social document, especially given the young Victor's broad exposure to toughs and toffs alike. I've only read a handful of his short stories and I'm now an eager convert. Well worth a look.
April 9, 2010
Tender, droll, and utterly brilliant. The consistent pleasure of the prose alone is worth any amount of trouble you may have in finding a copy of this book. Pritchett’s evocation of era and character are matchless and this memoir (like Edmund Gosse’s ‘Father and Son,’ another classic of British autobiography) shows up the mere confessional faddishness of what passes for memoir today.
February 6, 2017
I wanted and expected to like this, but found it hard going. There were a few interesting bits: I found the descriptions of the authors job at a tanners particularly good. The stories of family life were disjointed and puzzling. I didn't like his family much - all were quite unsympathetic. It also ended abruptly - felt like an outpouring of memories rather than an autobiography.
March 19, 2010
Pritchett had a topsy-turvy and somewhat unpleasant childhood,with a "cab at the door" to take the family to yet another flat when his Micawber-like father follows yet another dream; but he writes about it with British wit and wryness.
May 4, 2007
excellent memoir following the writer from birth up til he leaves home. i'll be looking out for the follow-up and other works by him, as the man can write and he gives me hope.
June 27, 2025
Uneven, but interesting. I am not going to forget the bit about cutting maggots out of the commercial hides intended for market any time soon.
March 11, 2013
I identify with this book even though i didn't move as a child
Want to read
January 11, 2014WSJ
lookedinto-decidedagainst
August 6, 20161* and a fab summing up from Esther.
January 27, 2015
An interesting perspective. Loved the description of his obsession with books.
May 25, 2009
A memoir of growing up in Edwardian England.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews