Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man: The Memoirs of George Sherston: 1 (George Sherston Trilogy)

Product Information

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 first volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston , with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell 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. 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? An early love of Sassoon's poetry (trench warfare poetry is as good for gothic teenage tastes as Sylvia Plath) led me to finally read this book, the first in the Sherston trilogy, a fictionalised trio of biographies written by Sassoon between the two world wars.All of this Edwardian badinage only makes it the more painful when he sees his cosy world come crashing down with the outbreak of the First World War, a narrative intrusion that is carefully held off until near the end of the book. It's consequently quite horrific to head off to the trenches with such a jovial narrator after endless chapters of cheerful rural pranks – like seeing Bertie Wooster given a rifle and thrown in a dug-out. That quote comes from an article by Peter Green in New Republic, which reading group contributor MythicalMagpie highlighted. The whole article is well worth reading, with the great historian on typically smart and provocative form. He also says that Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is "carefully sanitised" and that all Sassoon "wanted was the past". Green explains the success of the novel in deeply unflattering terms: After the war, Sassoon became involved in Labour Party politics, lectured on pacifism, and continued to write. His most successful works of this period were his trilogy of autobiographical novels, The Memoirs of George Sherston.In these, he gave a thinly-fictionalized account, with little changed except names, of his wartime experiences, contrasting them with his nostalgic memories of country life before the war and recounting the growth of his pacifist feelings. Some have maintained that Sassoon’s best work is his prose, particularly the first two Sherston novels. Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Manwas described by a critic for the Springfield Republicanas “a novel of wholly fresh and delightful content,” and Robert Littrell of Bookmancalled it “a singular and a strangely beautiful book.” To him, as to me, the War was inevitable and justifiable. Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees, was a crime against humanity. Times Literary Supplement, July 11, 1918; June 3, 1926; November 1, 1947; September 18, 1948; January 4, 1957; December 7, 1973.

Where the war verses are bayonet-hard and sharp, this prose is soft and gentle as the "river mist" George lovingly describes, down in a valley, where "a goods train whistled as it puffed steadily away from the station with a distinctly heard clanking of buffers. How little I knew of the enormous world beyond the valley and those low green hills."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. Most British people of a certain age will know of Siegfried Sassoon as one of the WWI soldier poets. When I was at high school in the 1970s his anti-war poems, and those of Wilfred Owen, featured prominently in our English lessons, a fashion that seems to have passed. This book is however the first part of his best known prose work, a "fictionalised autobiography" in three parts, with Sassoon thinly disguised as one George Sherston. If you cannot open a .mobi file on your mobile device, please use .epub with an appropriate eReader. I can hear the creak of the saddle and the clop and clink of the hoofs as we cross the bridge over the brook by Dundell Farm; there is a light burning in the farmhouse window, and the evening star glitters above a broken drift of half-luminous cloud.”

The air was Elysian with early summer and the early shadows of steep white clouds were chasing over the orchards and meadows; sunlight sparkled on green hedgerows that had been drenched by early morning showers. As I was carried past it all I was lazily aware through my dreaming and unobservant eyes that this was the sort of world I wanted. For it was my own countryside, and I loved it with an intimate feeling, though all its associations were crude and incoherent. I cannot think of it now without a sense of heartache, as if it contained something which I have never quite been able to discover."I recently saw the film, 'Benediction', about Siegfried Sassoon. I had only just read Pat Barker's 'The Ghost Road' (part of the 'Regeneration' trilogy), again featuring Sassoon and a number of his peers.