A witty memoir about the trials of adolescence, the tribulations of family life and the embarrassment that ensues from having larger-than-life parents.

Published in 1931, this is Ford's most fascinating memoir, following on Ancient Lights and covering the years from 1894 to the outbreak of World War I: his transition from privileged godson of the Pre-Raphaelites to the great Modern writer and editor he became.

"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing." So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved...