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Great Meadow: An Evocation
Sequel to the first volume of Dirk Bogarde's autobiography "A Postillion Struck by Lightning". Seen through the eyes of a 10-year old in the late 1930s, this novel recaptures an idyllic childhood, a time of love and gentleness with its sounds and scents intact, whilst the world beyond went to war.
207 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1992
3 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Dirk Bogarde
36 books28 followersDirk Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde was born of mixed Flemish, Dutch and Scottish ancestry, and baptised on 30 October 1921 at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham; 1892–1972), was the art editor of The Times and his mother, Margaret Niven (1898–1980), was a former actress. He attended University College School, the former Allan Glen's School in Glasgow (a time he described in his autobiography as unhappy, although others have disputed his account) and later studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. He began his acting career on stage in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II.
Bogarde served in World War II, being commissioned into the Queen's Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of captain and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. Taylor Downing's book "Spies in the Sky" tells of his work with a specialist unit interpreting aerial photo-reconnaissance information, before moving to Normandy with Canadian forces. Bogarde claimed to have been one of the first Allied officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward. As John Carey has summed up with regard to John Coldstream's authorised biography however, "it is virtually impossible that he (Bogarde) saw Belsen or any other camp. Things he overheard or read seem to have entered his imagination and been mistaken for lived experience." Coldstream's analysis seems to conclude that this was indeed the case. Nonetheless, the horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he claimed to have witnessed still left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late-1980s he wrote that he would disembark from a lift rather than ride with a German of his generation. Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS officer in 'The Night Porter'.
Bogarde's London West End theatre-acting debut was in 1939, with the stage name 'Derek Bogaerde', in J. B. Priestley's play Cornelius. After the war his agent renamed him 'Dirk Bogarde' and his good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor, contracted to The Rank Organisation under the wing of the prolific independent film producer Betty Box, who produced most of his early films and was instrumental in creating his matinée idol image.
During the 1950s, Bogarde came to prominence playing a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable in The Blue Lamp (1950) co-starring Jack Warner and Bernard Lee; a handsome artist who comes to rescue of Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris in So Long at the Fair, a film noir thriller; an accidental murderer who befriends a young boy played by Jon Whiteley in Hunted (aka The Stranger in Between) (1952); in Appointment in London (1953) as a young wing commander in Bomber Command who, against orders, opts to fly his 90th mission with his men in a major air offensive against the Germans; an unjustly imprisoned man who regains hope in clearing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive in Desperate Moment (1953); Doctor in the House (1954), as a medical student, in a film that made Bogarde one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s, and co-starring Kenneth More, Donald Sinden and James Robertson Justice as their crabby mentor; The Sleeping Tiger (1954), playing a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey; Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles.
Bogarde continued acting until 1990. 'Daddy Nostalgie' was his final film.
Bogarde served in World War II, being commissioned into the Queen's Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of captain and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. Taylor Downing's book "Spies in the Sky" tells of his work with a specialist unit interpreting aerial photo-reconnaissance information, before moving to Normandy with Canadian forces. Bogarde claimed to have been one of the first Allied officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward. As John Carey has summed up with regard to John Coldstream's authorised biography however, "it is virtually impossible that he (Bogarde) saw Belsen or any other camp. Things he overheard or read seem to have entered his imagination and been mistaken for lived experience." Coldstream's analysis seems to conclude that this was indeed the case. Nonetheless, the horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he claimed to have witnessed still left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late-1980s he wrote that he would disembark from a lift rather than ride with a German of his generation. Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS officer in 'The Night Porter'.
Bogarde's London West End theatre-acting debut was in 1939, with the stage name 'Derek Bogaerde', in J. B. Priestley's play Cornelius. After the war his agent renamed him 'Dirk Bogarde' and his good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor, contracted to The Rank Organisation under the wing of the prolific independent film producer Betty Box, who produced most of his early films and was instrumental in creating his matinée idol image.
During the 1950s, Bogarde came to prominence playing a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable in The Blue Lamp (1950) co-starring Jack Warner and Bernard Lee; a handsome artist who comes to rescue of Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris in So Long at the Fair, a film noir thriller; an accidental murderer who befriends a young boy played by Jon Whiteley in Hunted (aka The Stranger in Between) (1952); in Appointment in London (1953) as a young wing commander in Bomber Command who, against orders, opts to fly his 90th mission with his men in a major air offensive against the Germans; an unjustly imprisoned man who regains hope in clearing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive in Desperate Moment (1953); Doctor in the House (1954), as a medical student, in a film that made Bogarde one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s, and co-starring Kenneth More, Donald Sinden and James Robertson Justice as their crabby mentor; The Sleeping Tiger (1954), playing a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey; Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles.
Bogarde continued acting until 1990. 'Daddy Nostalgie' was his final film.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
October 13, 2025
Dirk Bogarde quite rightly sub-titles the book (on the cover) An Evocation. He remembers a time some 50 years earlier when he was a young boy on the Sussex Downs and the writing is exactly like that of a junior and captures the innocence of a time long gone and before the 20th century's second major conflict. Lally, the nanny, features strongly as does his sister and family in a very pleasant read that takes one away from the stresses and strains of modern living. Bogarde has certainly done well to write the story as though it were related by a youngster for he is writing it with the benefit of hindsight, and with age a better understanding of what actually happened at the time, and therefore the publisher's blurb inside the dust wrapper "seen through the eyes of an innocent shrewd young boy" is perhaps gilding the lily a little - nevertheless none the worse for that.
April 11, 2013
‘An evocation’ says the cover, and evocation is exactly the right word. This is a childhood memoir, written from old age and it is quite lovely.
Dirk Bogarde was undoubtedly blessed. His father was the art editor of the Sunday Times, his mother was a former actress, and the family was more than comfortably off. Their home was on the Sussex Downs,and the children seemed to live their lives out of doors, coming home only for practical necessities. That included meals and those were reported frequently, and always with loving detail.
“It was shepherd’s pie and runner beans for lunch, and Daddies sauce. Which was a particular treat because it was never allowed in the dining room when our parents were there, which seemed a pit because it had a quite interesting picture on it of a very happy father and mother and their children, and the father was smiling like anything and holding the bottle of sauce. That was why it was called Daddies, you see. But it was a very good sauce anyway, and it went down a treat, as Lally said, with a bit of shepherd’s pie. And then there was treacle tart for pudding, only because it was still summertime, and we’d had it hot the day before. We had it cold with clotted cream from the Court Dairy, and it was really pretty good, all sticky and crinkly.”
The voice and the words there, and throughout this memoir are those of a child. They are simple, precise and unsentimental, and they paint pictures beautifully. But they are filtered through an adult understanding. The boy didn’t understand the significance of the words ‘she might lose it’ when his mother fell on the stairs but the adult did, and so the boy reported that incident.
Those moments like that were the smallest of distractions; I was completely captivated by this evocation of an idyllic childhood. There was little incident – just an occasional visitor, an occasional trip – but young lives were lived.
Lally was indispensable. She had been nanny – she still was, even though her charges considered themselves far too grown up for these things – and she kept the household running smoothly. It is to her that this book is dedicated.
It is the story of a happy family, in a world that would soon be changed forever by World War II.
The highlight came at Christmas.
“The most beautiful tree you’ve ever seen. All gold and silver. Shining in the firelight. And we all cried out in surprise, and our father said the only thing was not to touch it really, because it was all made of holly branches and he’s had to paint all the leaves gold and silver by hand and it had taken him half the night. Our mother said that was his punishment for forgetting the tree in the first place, and Lally said it was a good thing she wasn’t about to do any washing because her clothes’ prop was now covered in holly and thick as a hedgehog with nails, and our father said that there was quite a gap in the fence down at the Daukeses’ cottage.”
And the lowest moments where when Lally fell ill. The terrible fear that she might die, that she might not be coming back. And the realisation that, loved though she was, she was not one of the family and came from a very different world.
Everything important in a young life is here, sights, sounds, incidents perfectly recalled more than fifty years after the fact.
The result is a lovely little book, with the power to pull you back to another time and place.
Dirk Bogarde was undoubtedly blessed. His father was the art editor of the Sunday Times, his mother was a former actress, and the family was more than comfortably off. Their home was on the Sussex Downs,and the children seemed to live their lives out of doors, coming home only for practical necessities. That included meals and those were reported frequently, and always with loving detail.
“It was shepherd’s pie and runner beans for lunch, and Daddies sauce. Which was a particular treat because it was never allowed in the dining room when our parents were there, which seemed a pit because it had a quite interesting picture on it of a very happy father and mother and their children, and the father was smiling like anything and holding the bottle of sauce. That was why it was called Daddies, you see. But it was a very good sauce anyway, and it went down a treat, as Lally said, with a bit of shepherd’s pie. And then there was treacle tart for pudding, only because it was still summertime, and we’d had it hot the day before. We had it cold with clotted cream from the Court Dairy, and it was really pretty good, all sticky and crinkly.”
The voice and the words there, and throughout this memoir are those of a child. They are simple, precise and unsentimental, and they paint pictures beautifully. But they are filtered through an adult understanding. The boy didn’t understand the significance of the words ‘she might lose it’ when his mother fell on the stairs but the adult did, and so the boy reported that incident.
Those moments like that were the smallest of distractions; I was completely captivated by this evocation of an idyllic childhood. There was little incident – just an occasional visitor, an occasional trip – but young lives were lived.
Lally was indispensable. She had been nanny – she still was, even though her charges considered themselves far too grown up for these things – and she kept the household running smoothly. It is to her that this book is dedicated.
It is the story of a happy family, in a world that would soon be changed forever by World War II.
The highlight came at Christmas.
“The most beautiful tree you’ve ever seen. All gold and silver. Shining in the firelight. And we all cried out in surprise, and our father said the only thing was not to touch it really, because it was all made of holly branches and he’s had to paint all the leaves gold and silver by hand and it had taken him half the night. Our mother said that was his punishment for forgetting the tree in the first place, and Lally said it was a good thing she wasn’t about to do any washing because her clothes’ prop was now covered in holly and thick as a hedgehog with nails, and our father said that there was quite a gap in the fence down at the Daukeses’ cottage.”
And the lowest moments where when Lally fell ill. The terrible fear that she might die, that she might not be coming back. And the realisation that, loved though she was, she was not one of the family and came from a very different world.
Everything important in a young life is here, sights, sounds, incidents perfectly recalled more than fifty years after the fact.
The result is a lovely little book, with the power to pull you back to another time and place.
July 26, 2008
Of Bogarde's biographical works, this one I hadn't read before. It's written in the style of a twelve year old, which gets quite annoying. As a snippet of a lost way of life it is interesting, but the style does grate somewhat (something worth repeating)
November 21, 2015
Am lending this to a friend, but as I haven't read it yet myself,
I knew it would come in handy for a pleasant light read,
having read most of Dirk Bogarde's other autobiographicals.
And ALL with much interest and pleasure
And so it is proving...
it is providing lots of chuckles as Bogarde cleverly writes it
as a child would tell and confide,
displaying errors of judgement
and wading in where his lack of knowledge
and naivety carry you back into an age of innocence.
Must say I am enjoying it hugely
and glad to balance it against Joseph Conrad
and Albert Camus whose books I am also reading
but which cannot be regarded as 'light'!!!
And by 'light' I certainly don't mean 'inferior'in any way!!!
FINITO...finished this today !!
...a rather sober conclusion as the 13 year old Dirk realises in these last chapters that his World is changing or threatened with loss.
On a World Canvas Hitler hovers in the background as Jewish refugees arrive on their doorstep...it is 1934, the war is still 5 years away.
A new baby brother is born...Dirk's sister reflects the mood when she comments how she loves this baby but "wasn't it awful that they had to grow up". Nothing remains the same...a two-sided coin if ever!!
Dirk is being sent off to a school in Glasgow accompanied by his father's threat: "Just remember we are not expected to fail in this family".And that the school would give him a decent education "whether he liked it or not."
Their cottage home he loves is possibly to soon go on the market.
And Lally, the children's beloved nanny, has expressed the inevitable that her ageing parents will soon be in need of her. "I didn't listen, she was making everything sound so terrible. It was like the end of the world...I just sat with the shadows getting long. Having a think."
Bogarde has been criticised for not always telling 'the Truth', but whatever THAT is, he sure knows how to communicate the Reality of the pain that change and loss can have on us, at any age.
A Gem of a Book.
August 3, 2012
This is the tale of Dirk Bogarde's rather privileged childhood, just before the outbreak of WW2, told as if he was still that little boy.
An elderly lady told me he could have been describing her childhood, and it was her favourite book, for that reason. I could see why. It is beautifully told, and some of the phrases - "a second hand mother," for example, are superb. (You'll have to read it to find out what he meant!) It creates a very clear picture, and is a beautiful book.
An elderly lady told me he could have been describing her childhood, and it was her favourite book, for that reason. I could see why. It is beautifully told, and some of the phrases - "a second hand mother," for example, are superb. (You'll have to read it to find out what he meant!) It creates a very clear picture, and is a beautiful book.
February 9, 2025
Picked this up for one pound in a second-hand book store in London last year. I was drawn to the title, and the promise of a childhood memoir set in the 1920s and 1930s. It didn't even register that Dirk Bogarde was a famous actor.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, because Bogarde's memory is so evocative: crossing the hot meadow with his sister in summer, fetching eggs from one neighbor and milk from another, boiling water to take a bath...I could feel it all, and it all seemed so wonderfully slow and simple.
About two-thirds in, though, I was starting to get a bit impatient with the sheer lack of anything happening. Initially, Dirk and his sister Elizabeth are visited by their cousin Flora, and I was intrigued by her. Yet, when she leaves, there's a kind of narrative void that takes a while to be filled.
It probably didn't help that I became frustrated with the Nanny's complete lack of emotional intelligence. I know this is partly cultural ("stiff upper lip" and all of that), and partly a mark of the times (early 1930s), but good God.
When Dirk loses his mice, no one comforts him. They ignore him altogether, even though he's clearly very sad.
When Flora starts crying when it sinks in she doesn't have a mother (whereas Dirk and Elizabeth do), the Nanny simply says: "Well, but you have a brother."
So dismissive! Really painful to read.
I know it's unfair to expect anything different, but it still bothered me.
I don't know if I'll ever read any of Bogarde's other volumes of autobiography, but this one was cozy and mostly interesting, albeit a bit slow towards the end. A good escape from reality, if you need one, and a lovely picture of the rural 1920s and 1930s in the UK.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, because Bogarde's memory is so evocative: crossing the hot meadow with his sister in summer, fetching eggs from one neighbor and milk from another, boiling water to take a bath...I could feel it all, and it all seemed so wonderfully slow and simple.
About two-thirds in, though, I was starting to get a bit impatient with the sheer lack of anything happening. Initially, Dirk and his sister Elizabeth are visited by their cousin Flora, and I was intrigued by her. Yet, when she leaves, there's a kind of narrative void that takes a while to be filled.
It probably didn't help that I became frustrated with the Nanny's complete lack of emotional intelligence. I know this is partly cultural ("stiff upper lip" and all of that), and partly a mark of the times (early 1930s), but good God.
When Dirk loses his mice, no one comforts him. They ignore him altogether, even though he's clearly very sad.
When Flora starts crying when it sinks in she doesn't have a mother (whereas Dirk and Elizabeth do), the Nanny simply says: "Well, but you have a brother."
So dismissive! Really painful to read.
I know it's unfair to expect anything different, but it still bothered me.
I don't know if I'll ever read any of Bogarde's other volumes of autobiography, but this one was cozy and mostly interesting, albeit a bit slow towards the end. A good escape from reality, if you need one, and a lovely picture of the rural 1920s and 1930s in the UK.
March 2, 2020
"In Great Meadow Dirk Bogarde takes us once more to a lost world and an almost forgotten time, which we visited fleetingly in the first part of his autobiography A Postillion Struck by Lightning.
"From 1927 to 1934 he lived in a remote cottage in the Sussex Downs, with his sister Elizabeth and their devoted but strict nanny, 'Lally'. This was a time of the gleaning at the end of summer, of harvests and harvest mice, of oil lamps, of wells and incredible childhood adventures.
"Seen through the eyes of an innocent, shrewd young boy, Great Meadow recaptures an idyllic childhood, a time of love and gentleness, with its sounds and scents intact, while the world beyond prepared for war."
~~front flap
A wonderful book, completely capturing that distant, gentle time and the innocence of childhood.
"From 1927 to 1934 he lived in a remote cottage in the Sussex Downs, with his sister Elizabeth and their devoted but strict nanny, 'Lally'. This was a time of the gleaning at the end of summer, of harvests and harvest mice, of oil lamps, of wells and incredible childhood adventures.
"Seen through the eyes of an innocent, shrewd young boy, Great Meadow recaptures an idyllic childhood, a time of love and gentleness, with its sounds and scents intact, while the world beyond prepared for war."
~~front flap
A wonderful book, completely capturing that distant, gentle time and the innocence of childhood.
July 14, 2017
Re-read after about twenty years and I still love it. The way Bogarde captures the voice of the twelve-year-old is wonderful, really charming, and he brilliantly combines it with that typical nature of childhood memories, where everything blends and blurs and you couldn't tell whether something happened once or a few times or a lot and the memories you evoke to your own mind are more just images and a feeling than anything clear and tangible. Re-creating this with words for the reader to experience is an amazing achievement, to my mind.
September 29, 2019
What should not work, specifically writing in the voice of a child, does. Perhaps only for Bogarde. For some reason, of all of his autobiographies, this one came across as the most honest. Perhaps because he wrote it in the voice of his younger self, before all of the artifice and necessary omissions of his later life. For this reason, it was supremely melancholy and quite lovely.
February 19, 2025
The crap I was reduced to reading back when I was stuck in Foreign Lands. Geez.
The only thing worse than yakking about trees is yakking about fucking FLOWERS. (Well, Foodie-talk too. Maybe it's the worst of all. But only because it's all lies. MAYBE flower-talk is true. I'd never know.)
Pitiful.
The only thing worse than yakking about trees is yakking about fucking FLOWERS. (Well, Foodie-talk too. Maybe it's the worst of all. But only because it's all lies. MAYBE flower-talk is true. I'd never know.)
Pitiful.
September 21, 2017
Boring.. much better books out there.
September 3, 2020
Masterpiece. Wonderfully evocative of an idyllic childhood.
March 9, 2022
Volume Five of Dirk's seven volumes of memoirs. I love his writing and stories, but this is likely appealing to serious Bogarde fans only.
April 10, 2022
Another gem from Dirk Bogarde. I'll be sorry when I've read them all.
February 23, 2024
Childhood memories from rural Sussex
June 18, 2025
Always love Dirk x
February 6, 2021
A moment in time accurately recalled. The author's recall of his young days is quite incredible, unless of course it's an amalgam of childhood events. But even so, his ability to write in the same manner a child thinks is quite superb .
July 11, 2024
Wonderful!
February 28, 2016
Another of Bogarde's biographical stories, this one of his childhood in England around the time of Hitler's rise. It reads like a novel, even though one knows it is more-or-less an account of Bogarde's childhood. There is nothing peculiar about the ending, but it left me with a tingling sensation that was hard to shake. Bogarde was writing of his childhood in the early 1930s, but recollecting his childhood some 60 years later. His ability to put his own story into a format that keeps the reader fascinated in the mundane activities of a boy living in the '30s is due in no small part to his excellent prose.
March 21, 2009
I picked this up when I was on holiday in Thailand - it is written as if he is an 8, 9, 10 and 11 year old boy - these 4 years of his childhood summers before World War 2 in the English countryside, re-told with eloquence and humor, describing a world that is now lost to many of us, yet to read about it still brought back memories for me. I re-read this book often and highly recommend it.
March 6, 2014
Recalling his cottage holidays down in Sussex - the actor reads extracts from his book of childhood reminiscences.
UGH!
UGH!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 1, 2017
A wonderful, touching memoir of growing up in rural England between the great wars. Dirk Bogarde grew up to be a film star and matinee idol.
April 15, 2013
Quite simply one of my favourite books. I just loved the way it was written in the manner of a child.
July 24, 2014
A lovely book of nostalgia for a bygone age and people.Easy to read and beautifully written.
May 30, 2017
Another beautifully written and evocative autobiography from Dirk Bogarde.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews