My Animals (and Other Family)

A rural childhood 1937-1956

A rural childhood 1937-1956

Falling truly, madly, deeply in love with one animal after another was a recurrent theme of the author’s childhood, actively encouraged by her beautiful, impetuous mother as she single-handedly held the family together during the war’s darkest days.

While her husband’s regiment battled through the Tunisian desert to Italy and Austria, she criss-crossed beleaguered Britain with children, ration books, and an unwieldy train of rabbits, dogs, cats and ponies, dreaming of land of her own.

But farming can’t be learned overnight, and translated into the reality of 400 acres of hilly, rain-lashed Radnorshire, that dream became a challenge for all ranks. Dragooned into acting as unskilled, unpaid labour for jobs that would make today’s Health-and-Safety freaks blench – burning rushes, driving tractors, riding on Land-Rover bonnets and towering haywains – the children came to look on boarding-school as a rest-cure, though they retain from those days of carefree, unregulated farm life a treasure-house of memories.

This elegant memoir, told with disarming honesty and gentle humour, follows the development of a lively, headstrong, self-effacing young girl into womanhood.

Availability:

Illustrations:
16 Black & white plates

Pages:
224

Published:
Sep 10, 2009

ISBN:
9781906122133

About the Author:

Phyllida is the author of My Animals (and Other Family), a Job for All Seasons and It Happened in Gloucestershire. As D.P. Hart-Davis, she has also written a series of highly-acclaimed sporting thrillers: Death of a Dealer, Death of a Selkie, The Stalking Party and Death of a High Flyer all of which are published by Merlin Unwin Books.

After a career in magazines and journalism, Phyllida was the fiction-buyer for the Mirror Group. She's also had 16 novels published and was a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, as well as for several country magazines.

Married to author and journalist Duff Hart-Davis, she lives on a small farm in Gloucestershire.