Getting Over It

by Oliver Bernard

Oliver Bernard’s social background is in some respects a conventional one. His father was a successful stage designer; his mother, at the time of her marriage, a talented actress and singer. The family enjoyed a comfortable life-style and Oliver was sent to Westminster School. Oliver's seduction at the age of fourteen by an attractive widow suggests a precocious sexuality; indeed, for a brief spell he became a male prostitute. However, it is with women that he has since been involved intimately. Here he describes with literary finesse these and some of the other strands of his unusual family and school; wartime service in the RAF and his almost simultaneous enrolment in the Communist Party; spells in Paris and Corsica after the war; work as a kitchen porter and manual labourer; experience as an advertising copywriter and teacher of drama; and imprisonment in 1984 for CND activities. The Bohemian life in the clubs and pubs of Soho in the forties and fifties forms a focal point of the book. There Oliver, like his brothers Bruce and Jeffrey, knew the painters Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton; writers and poets such as Julian Maclaren-Ross, Daniel Farson, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Smart and George Barker. Joyce Grenfell befriended him, and through her he was encouraged as a poet by Walter de la Mare. In Getting Over It Oliver Bernard tries ‘to make sense of the past’. In doing so he invites us, with wit and candour, to share some of his climactic adventures. His book is an eye-opener and immensely entertaining from start to finish.

159 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Oliver Bernard was an English poet, memoirist, and translator, best known for his English translations of Arthur Rimbaud in the Penguin Classics series. Born into a creative family in London, he was the son of architect Oliver Percy Bernard and opera singer Dora Hodges, and brother to Bruce and Jeffrey Bernard. A prominent figure in mid-twentieth-century literary circles, he later converted to Roman Catholicism and lived in Norfolk. Bernard was an advocate for peace and spent time in prison for anti-nuclear activism. His legacy includes his poetry, memoirs, and a deep commitment to social and spiritual causes.