City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Bertie, May and Mrs Fish, country memories of wartime, Xandra Bingley

eng

Bertie, May and Mrs Fish

Xandra Bingley

country memories of wartime

Xandra Bingley's early years were spent on a Cotswold hill farm during the Second World War and its aftermath. The author's mother, the elegant and remarkably hardy May, turns from a sparkling debutante and horsewoman into a farmer while Xandra's father, Bertie, is away at war. Isolated by landscape, farmyards and a thousand acres, Xandra is an only child among animals, farm workers, landgirls and prisoners of war as Christian and 1930s upper-class values disappear. This book captures the essence of a country childhood and, obliquely through a young girl's eyes and ears, the complicated, often harsh, adult world surrounding her