News & Reviews
“This is a book that is joyous and sad at the same time; a book that will be a treat for anyone who
likes reading memoirs.
It’s a fascinating story, which in passing gives a great insight into the threadbare London of the ’40s
and ’50s and also into boarding school life at the time.
This book is all about love; about George’s love for Barbara, and about the love between father and son.
It is this quality of writing, acute observation and ruthless honesty that marks a similarity between
this book and McGahern’s memoir. Arnold’s book deserves to be just as big a bestseller.”
(All above from the review by John Spain)
“This is a strange and haunting book about a strange and haunting love story.”
“Bruce Arnold’s panoramically personal memoir is a compelling narrative of the intense affair between
his father and the great love of his life, Barbara Young.”
… beyond such gifts, however, what is perhaps most poignant and of greatest benefit regarding Arnold’s
engaging autobiographical memoir is that, once you’ve set aside this exquisite recollection, you retain
the feeling love is everything.”
(From review by Frank Hanover)
“The commentator Bruce Arnold’s memoir of his father, a quite extraordinary, not to say impossible,
character, is also exceptional.
It is a tribute to the author’s narrative sense and elegant style that we are not bamboozled by
the pace of events, the succession of women, the staggering energy of this elderly man, and the
lengths to which the well-connected English middle class on their uppers went to to keep the show on
the road.
These were indeed different times, and a different country. Bruce Arnold realised that what he got
from his father was love, the greatest gift; he still feels its force, 'hitting me like the waves
of the sea'.”
(From review by John S Doyle)
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