Most readers encounter Sassoon as the brave soldier-poet with the Military Cross, the mentor of Wilfred Owen, who has shaped our thinking on the First World War perhaps more than anyone else. It was Sassoon who first exposed the horrors of the trenches in his poetry. His depiction of the calamitous Western Front and the gulf between blundering, incompetent generals and innocent young soldiers betrayed is the overriding impression we have of that conflict, despite efforts of revisionist historians in the decades since his death. But that afternoon, as I devoured the first of Sassoon’s three volumes of lightly fictionalized autobiography, I met him as a boy in the person of his alter-ego George Sherston, clip-clopping to a distant meet alongside Dixon the groom, his fingers numb and a melting hoarfrost on the hedgerows. A highly decorated English soldier and an acclaimed poet and novelist, Siegfried Sassoon won fame for his trilogy of fictionalized autobiographies that wonderfully capture the vanishing idylls of Edwardian England and the brutal realities of war. Nowadays in the UK fox hunting is only permitted in a modified form, but in the 80s and 90s it was a very divisive political issue. This book reveals that it was also so even a century ago. At one point Sassoon relates how a village parson shakes his fist at the hunters and calls them "brutes" (Sherston dismisses him as a "silly old buffer"). Elsewhere another huntsman refers to "those damned socialists who want to stop us hunting." Typically, the author comments that "Socialists, for me, began and ended in Hyde Park, which was quite a harmless place for them to function in." [Hyde Park is a London park, one corner of which became established as a location for political and religious speakers]. Probably there are quite a few people who will be put off reading this book by its title, but the author does not actually describe the death of any fox, and his motivation for hunting seems to be the companionship of like minded people and the opportunity for a good gallop around the countryside. I live in a rural area and, though I don't hunt myself, I know that fox hunting is still seen as a social event by the farming and landowning sector. Knowing something about horses probably also adds to the enjoyment of reading this book. Come, Georgie," Stephen said. "There is better sport to be had at the Ringwell where Lieut-Col CMF Hesmon and other aristocrats are to be found." As my groom and personal valet, Dixon was also thrilled he was to be allowed to breathe the same air as Lieut-Col CMF Hesmon and he advised me to make a trip to my London tailor to buy some newer hunting attire. Sassoon/Sherston is just beginning to get a glimmering of what he wants to do with the rest of his life. It will all be compressed very shortly when he finds himself among the bombs, blood, and horror of war. When you believe you will die at any moment, long term life goals become irrelevant, even painful to contemplate.

It's a fascinating record of lost language and standards of behaviour and politeness, expectation and strictly defined class boundaries. Particularly because of what Sassoon leaves out - his alter-ego is an only child raised by an aunt, while he in reality had a brother whose death at Gallipoli devastated him. Sherston is not Jewish either - something which mattered a great deal in England, and made Sherston's sense of being an impostor, not quite up to the task of being what he was expected to become, ring a little false. By excising his Jewishness (he was not religious, his father having been rejected by his very correct anglo-indian family for marrying a christian for love) Sassoon removes the most obvious barrier to Sherston's social mobility and makes him seem reticent in a manner which rings false to his personality.It has taken me a few days before i could review this book. There is nothing earth shattering about the narrative - a young man who wishes he is much richer than his actually is, so he can live a life of leisure. I felt the same at his age & it was harder having a few friends who were independently wealthy & watching from the side lines. What gives this novel power is you know this to be autobiographical; this book is talking about a period that is going to be shattered and completely replaced with something new. So, we are immersed in rural Kent, with servants and horses and steam trains and a bucolic life of gentle pursuits. Of an England that is hankering for a return to the glory of Victoria, but also a period of stability economically. But European royalty are not experiencing a time of stability & of course, it ultimately explodes into what we know as World War 1. The first volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston , with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell Memoirs of a fox hunting man, written by Siegfried Sasssoon, is a book about the growing up. The main character, George, takes us through the course his life. He is a sportsman as well as a hunter.

The impact of the deaths of those he loved (he gave them pseudonyms), killed in WWI, was expertly recounted. Absent was his famous turnaround and stance against WWI, but perhaps that comes in the next instalment given this is the first in a trilogy. His sensitivity, that would later plague him in war but make him an excellent poet, is also apparent by an utterance that he makes during his first fox hunt. ””Don’t do that; they’ll catch him!’ I exclaimed.” He is referring to the fox and to someone about to alert the other riders and dogs to the proper direction taken by the fox. Of course, this statement is baffling to the rest of the field. Sherston is not there to catch the fox. He is there to enjoy the ride, the jumping of fences, and the comradery of men intent on the same purpose. This is an interesting novel, not the simple evocation of a lost past that I was expecting; there is much more nuance and Sassoon was clearly expressing a good deal of ambivalence (sitting on the fence if I am being cynical). The asides make it more interesting as do the evocations of Proust. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-10-14 21:13:04 Boxid IA161301 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London Date-raw January 1, 1960 Edition Repr. [d. Ausg.] 1960. External-identifier The Proust connection goes even deeper, since the scene has an almost direct emotional parallel in In Search Of Lost Time, where Marcel is rude to his grandmother in her final days and subsequently haunted by remorse. So much for the anti-modern. Could it be said that part of the reason Sassoon dug into his past, like Proust, was to make a space for the foundations of the future?Here is a book that has made me feel a bit nostalgic about my childhood and youth. It has reminded me of the days when I was in primary school and we had something called 'dictation'. As for the author, I first heard of him from Pat Baker's book, the eye in the door. This is what motivated me to buy it.

He is so passionate about what he does that he drops out of cambridge university where he was to study the law and become a barrister. Possibly more surprising is the fact that Sassoon should write with such loveliness. It takes some getting used to, after those poems. Sassoon, who dwelt so long on grey mud, bleached sand bags and ashen-faced soldiers, on the stench of death, on screams and on the sound of wind "dulled by guns", can also describe sensory perceptions with all the sensual relish of Proust (of whom he was clearly a fan): Sassoon writes beautifully, and has an eye for those little quirks that make the most minor characters memorable and amusing. He writes with special fondness for the countryside, and his descriptions of crisp winter mornings and the thrill of being young and galloping through the fields on a horse were just perfect. Sherston's life is gloriously free from worry or responsibility, but there's a dark cloud on the horizon; we can see it getting ever closer as the years advance towards 1914, but Sherston is blissfully unaware. When it comes, he is utterly unprepared. Not that that was any great concern to me as I rode Mr Star along the lanes to my first meet. How big everything seemed to a youth as callow as myself and I kept myself out of harm's way towards the rear, admiring the precocious sporting talents of Denis Milden, a boy no more than a year older than my fourteen years. "To be sure, Master Milden is a handsome rider," said Dixon, as we returned home. "But you are no booby yourself." My heart swelled with pride and I resolved to become the best huntsman of my generation. This is the first of Siegfried Sassoon’s trilogy relating to the First World War; part of my reading for the anniversary this year. Although a novel, this is strongly autobiographical and there is no doubt that the protagonist, George Sherston, is Sassoon.Kent, the county in which George grows up, is famous for its fox hunting, and so once he is riding a horse, George is soon taken by Dixon to a hunt happening nearby, where he meets his future friend Denis Milden. George is impressed by the activity of the hunt, the audacious way in which the hunters ride their animals and the liveliness of the dogs. He decides that when he grows older, he too will be a fox hunter. I had a difficult time relating with the old english customs and lifestyle as they are the kind of stuff we dont practice here in Kenya. Sassoon’s critical biography of Victorian novelist and poet George Meredithfound a similarly positive reception. In this volume, he recounted numerous anecdotes about Meredith, portraying him vividly as a person as well as an author: “The reader lays the book down with the feeling that a great author has become one of his close neighbors,” wrote G.F. Whicher in the New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review.The critical portions of the book were also praised, though some found the writing careless. But the New Yorkercritic noted Sassoon’s “fresh and lively literary criticism,” and the reviewer for the Times Literary Supplementdeclared that “Mr. Sassoon gives us a poet’s estimate, considered with intensity of insight, skilfully shaped as biography, and written with certainty of style.” Published anonymously) Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (novel), Faber & Gwyer, 1928, Coward, 1929, new edition, Faber, 1954.