Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves

by WilliamGraves (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $12.12

  In 1944, at the age of five, William Graves was taken from England to the delightful mountain village of Deya in Majorca, where his father - the poet Robert Graves - had returned with his new family to the place he had lived with Laura Riding before the war. Young William grew up in the shadow of this great writer in the Englishness of the Graves household, while experiencing the ways of life of the Majorcans, which had hardly changed for hundreds of years. Wonderfully observant, and full of feeling for the locality, this book is also a fascinating portrait of Robert Graves himself, his 'Muses', and his entourage, and a revealing study of how the son of a famous father finds his own identity.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.71

  As a five-year-old child, William Graves is taken in 1944 from England to a mountain village in Majorca, where his father, the poet Robert Graves, had returned with his new family to the place where he had lived before the war with Laura Riding. Young William grows up in the writer's shadow, while experiencing the way of life of the Majorcans which have hardly changed for hundreds of years, and participating in the day-to-day activities of the village. William Graves conveys the texture of life in Majorca - the food, the pattern of the seasons, the camaraderie and rivalries within the village, and the growing sense, from the Sixties onwards, that his fragile paradise was under threat. The book is also a portrait of Robert Graves, his Muses and his entourage, and a study of how the son of a famous father finds his own identity.