Dimensions
144 x 204 x 24mm
Readers very often ask writers, 'how did your writing life begin?' In this short memoir, Rose tries to answer that question, buried somewhere in a complex childhood, which was both materially privileged and emotionally impoverished.
Growing up in post-war London, a city still partly in ruins, with a society constrained to fierce austerity because of rationing, the girl known then as 'Rosie' and her sister Jo long perpetually for the refuge of their grandparents Hampshire farm, where the food is plentiful and the landscape serene. They believe that this place will be 'theirs' forever, and that their lives will go on in an untroubled way.
But when Rosie is ten years old, everything changes. She and Jo lose their father, their London house, their school, their friends, and most agonisingly of all, their beloved Nanny, Vera, the only adult to have shown them real love and affection. At a cold boarding-school in Hertfordshire, they feel like castaways.
Rose Tremain casts a revealing light on the 'vanished' world of the 1940s and 1950s in England and describes the slow journey from being Rosie, the outcast girl, to becoming Rose, the writer of powerful fictions that have won worldwide acclaim.
