The Tiger, The Lizard and Orson Welles

The author was born and spent the early years of her life in The Garden of England – Kent. Gardens were everything then, for working in and for growing everything you could possible want to eat and in 1939-45 and beyond; this was of paramount importance. The joy of this countryside, this way of life, are captured in these memoirs of a golden childhood, despite the closeness of the war, Hitler's armies, fighter planes and bombers, (the latter of which had a loud and distinctive sound) were a constant backdrop to these memoirs of a golden childhood. You always knew if it was them or us coming through the clouds. In those days, people didn't travel far out of their village and the author describes the intimacy of friendship with so many of the inhabitants, their pride in the land they worked and their courage in the face of daily and nightly fear.As the exhortations to small farmers were to FEED THE NATION that is what they did. You fed the Nation first, then your own family. The post-war period saw a gradual diminishing of the necessity of the small farmer as the big farmers received subsidies for growing wheat, therefore they grew wheat and there was what became known as a wheat mountain, likewise when the government encouraged cattle-rearing, there was a beef mountain. A lot of farmers became very rich with the government's help and most of the small farmers, still picking their apples – thirty different varieties of apple then – waited for their asparagus to reach ifs 5-year-crown maturity, then realized that with the war over, their value had gone and most foresaw the coming of the Common Market as the enemy from across the Channel, again.It is the centenary of the birth of Laurie Lee and Cider with Rosie uniquely describes the joy and the pathos of a childhood with poignancy and some similarity and in the name of progress, the sadness that change can bring.