Woodbrook

(Paperback)

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Description

'Woodbrook is simply one of the most enchanting books I've read in a long time - it begins in delight before it ends in wisdom' - Seamus Heaney Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. It has been owned since the seventeenth century by the Anglo-Irish Kirkwoods. In 1932, David Thomson, aged eighteen, went there are a tutor. He stayed for ten years. This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves - for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil. In it he builds up a delicate, lyrical picture of a gentle pre-war society, of Irish history and troubled Anglo-Irish relations, and of a delightful family. Above all, his story reverberates with the enchantment of falling in love and with the desolation of bereavement.

Reviews

A brilliantly original mix of love-story, memoir and history -- Brian Moore
It remains with one long after the story is told, a haunting sadness, a memory and a dream -- Olivia Manning * Spectator *

Author Bio

David Thomson was born in India in 1914 to Scottish parents, but grew up in Scotland and Derbyshire. After the period described in Woodbrook he developed a career in writing and at the BBC. He died in 1988.