A Tuscan Childhood - Hardcover

Beevor, Antony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375404627 ISBN 13: 9780375404627

Publisher: Pantheon, 1999

Synopsis

The enchantments of the Tuscan countryside are captured in this memoir of the idyllic Bohemian life the author shared with her family in their Italian castle in the years between the two world wars.

When Kinta Beevor was five years old, her father, the painter Aubrey Waterfield, and her mother, a writer, settled their family into a castle near the Tuscan village of Aulla. It became the center of an artistic world that included D. H. Lawrence, Robert Trevelyan, and Rex Whistler. While the adults wrote and painted, Kinta and her brother explored the castle and the nearby Florentine villa of their great-aunt Janet Ross. They helped with the grape and olive harvests, accompanied the stonemason in his search for wild mushrooms, learned how to "tickle trout." They spent their summers in tents in the mountains, with shepherds and their charcoal burners. The family fled at the approach of war, which destroyed the town and damaged the castle. But Kinta would return to witness the courage and skill of the Tuscan people as they rebuilt the castle, the town, their lives, and her memories.

Engaging, lyrical, and witty, A Tuscan Childhood evokes the splendors of rural Italy and what it was like to be a child blissfully ensconced there.

About this title

Review

What could be more romantic than living in an ancient fortress, dining in its rooftop garden, and sleeping under the stars? English artists and intellectuals like the author's parents (painter Aubrey Waterfield and journalist Lina Duff Gordon) have traditionally adored the Italian countryside, and their daughter's enchanting memoir describes the happy haven they found near the Tuscan town of Aulla. Kinta was only 5 in 1916 when she made her first trip by pony trap up the steep road to their hilltop abode, and neither exile to English boarding school nor the Second World War could keep her away for long. Famous friends like Bernard Berenson and D.H. Lawrence make cameo appearances, but the real stars are the earthy, dignified Tuscan peasants who worked for her family. Through them, the author immersed herself in the timeless rhythms of rural existence. The text's highlights include a vivid account of vendemmia, the grape harvest, and the glories of Italian cuisine. Anyone who can read her descriptions of the local polenta, zuppa di verdura, and other meticulously prepared dishes without feeling a rumble in the stomach truly has no interest in food. Though Beevor's final chapters note the changes that have come to Tuscany in the postwar era, her recollections pay loving tribute to a way of life that truly seems eternal. --Wendy Smith

From the Publisher

"Wonderful...[Kinta Beevor has] that special English grasp of grandeur and simplicity....I fell immediately into her world, and was sorry when I reached the end."
--Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0375404627
• ISBN 13: 9780375404627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288