Big House memories sprinkled with intriguing characters, along with a fascinating dash of far flung travel and exotic pets – my late Mum's #greatread memoir.
'Anyone interested in the Anglo-Irish should read this short and poignant volume. The title alone sums up the wistful and doom-laden joi de vivre of a minority culture in terminal decline, trying (but failing) to reconcile with the fact that its hey-day is over.
'The book is an extremely well-written memoir by the (adopted) daughter and grand-daughter of a once-prominent Anglo-Irish family, the de Veres, who lived at a magnificent pile, Curragh Chase, near Limerick. With a minimum of self-pity and a maximum of charming understatement, Joan de Vere tells the story of the decline of the de Vere's in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main individuals are vivid, nearly always with dramatic lives. But it is chiefly the elegant and elegiac literary style of the author herself which stays in the mind. **** Amazon review
'Anyone interested in the Anglo-Irish should read this short and poignant volume. The title alone sums up the wistful and doom-laden joi de vivre of a minority culture in terminal decline, trying (but failing) to reconcile with the fact that its hey-day is over.
'The book is an extremely well-written memoir by the (adopted) daughter and grand-daughter of a once-prominent Anglo-Irish family, the de Veres, who lived at a magnificent pile, Curragh Chase, near Limerick. With a minimum of self-pity and a maximum of charming understatement, Joan de Vere tells the story of the decline of the de Vere's in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main individuals are vivid, nearly always with dramatic lives. But it is chiefly the elegant and elegiac literary style of the author herself which stays in the mind. **** Amazon review