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.
Feudal Afterglow
It is peculiarly exciting to turn a page and find a strong personal emotion exactly distilled – an emotion hitherto believed to be one’s private idiosyncrasy. Around the age of 13 most bookish...
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