Showing A Cornish Childhood, 1935-47 by Anne Burley

Anne Burley recreates childhood in Cornwall fifty years ago. Seen through the eyes of a young girl, the Cornish life unfolds in all its peacefulness, surrounded by the ever-changing sea. The author tells of jaunts to the seaside, of picnics with ants and jam, of the excitement of Christmas when you are six. Then there are happy schooldays of hockey and work at the County School in Camborne, the sound of Cornish voices lifted in song in home and chapel, the War days of ration books and evacuees. And everywhere there are flowers, campions and foxgloves, bluebells and primroses in the tall Cornish hedges, and roses in the garden. Through this landscape move the relations, respectable or raffish, calm or passionate, who do not know that they are being judged by a small girl, who, now grown up, sees their faces, beloved, through the mists of memory, surrounded by flowers and the restless sea.