Early Days Audiobook on Audio CD, buy now from AudioGO

Those who have come to love Miss Read’s delightfully humorous novels of country life will be enraptured by these two autobiographical volumes, affectionate and unashamedly nostalgic accounts of her childhood.

In ‘A Fortunate Grandchild', Miss Read draws on her gentle and colourful memories of Grandma Read in Lewisham and Grandma Shafe in Walton-on-the-Naze, and their rambling flock-wallpapered houses full of nooks and forbidden adult mysteries, which provided young Dora with a bedrock of security in the uncertain days of the Great War.

'Time Remembered' describes the three years – 1921 to 1924 – that Miss Read spent at the village school in Chelsfield, Kent – one of the happiest periods of her life.

Early Days features two autobiographical stories from Miss. Read, also known by her real name Dora Jessie Saint. Her humour has a delightful English charm to it that is unmistakable and it is perfectly captured in these two flagrantly wistful accounts of her upbringing. The nostalgic tales of her childhood are as witty as they are charming and we soon learn that much of her writing inspirations come from her happy childhood that was largely spent in the picturesque and typically English region of Kent.

The first of the two novels is A Fortunate Grandchild during which we meet Saint’s two Grandmas: one of whom lived in Lewisham and the other in Walton-on-the-Naze. We are drawn into her childhood memories that are as colourful as they are affectionate and we catch a glimpse into life as a child growing up during the Great War. Time Remembered follows Saint’s life from 1921 to 1924 as she went to a local school in Kent, which she described as being three of the happiest years of her life. This is evident in her writing as we get to know the girl behind the lady who penned so many wonderfully imaginative books.

Catch these autobiographies on CD audiobook now with Early Days and get to know Miss. Read that little bit better…