Three Houses

As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week

‘There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream’

In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on ‘The Grange’, where her grandfather, the celebrated painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents’ home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones’ seaside retreat, where Angela’s cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green.

A tale of forbidden explorations, Punch and Judy shows, and adventures in the garden, Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast, this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work.