Sunnylea: A 1920s Childhood Remembered by Metcalfe, Jean - 1980

Michael Joseph, 1980. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. h/b 61 pages, condition is very good. Jean Metcalfe, for many years the popular presenter of Two-Way Family Favourites, says in her Introduction to Sunnylea: 'Looking back has been like lifting the front off an old doll's house and finding that all the smells and sounds and sensations of long ago are still there waiting to be taken out and recognised. But, of course, someone who is fifty years older notices the cobwebs and shadowy corners more than the child did. Hindsight keeps reminding me that the faded photograph people living in Sunnylea's safe circle were not dolls with happy smiles forever fixed on their faces. Now that they are gone, I remember them all with love.' The delicate and beautifully imagined watercolours in this book were originally painted forJean Metcalfe's future grand-children. This collection of pictorial and written memories of her childhood in the nineteen twenties marvellously evokes many small details remembered from her first seven years. Sunnylea is a book of pure and utter enchantment.