Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood

I don't think I've ever read such an honest and open autobiography. It took me months to read and I was completely immersed in Tirzah's world and her often exasperating personality. Her narrative style is slightly strange and takes some getting use to, but I felt so much for her. She describes her reactions to her husband's affairs and his death so movingly and without a single shred of self pity. As a woman in that era her own work was always going to take second place to her husband's, but she was a truly amazing artist, the reproductions included at the head of each chapter are just fabulous. The final few pages, written when she was in her early forties, include a letter to her friends when she knew she was dying, and a request that a message is passed on to a former lover thanking him for the happiness that he had given her. This reduced me to tears, very unusual for me. Thank you Anne Ullman for ensuring that this wonderful account of this woman's life can be shared, it is one of those books I'll always remember.

I was bought this as a wedding anniversary present -- and then my husband has taken it and read it. He has loved it and it has given him an insight into Ravillious too.

Love the book.This artists' commune is fascinating to read about and two villages away from where I lived for 30 years.

I come to this beautiful, moving and fascinating autobiography from two angles. Firstly, as with most readers, I imagine, from a long-standing interest in the art of her first husband Eric Ravilious, whose work has gained huge popularity recently. Secondly, from being brought up in the village a generation later where the Ravilious family lived for several years and which features so much in this account, Castle Hedingham in Essex.I visit the village frequently. Bank House now has a blue plaque to commemorate the Ravilious's stay there: the association is still strong. This local knowledge was of increasing importance to me as a reader: I could visualise all the places she described and some of the people too - Musette Majendie, for instance, who owned the castle, who used to dress in mannish clothes and drive around the village in a battered old Landrover, who thrilled the local scouts by standing with her feet over the edge of the towering keep, so the legend goes, and drop a stone between them. So many of the names were familiar too: my father, for instance, bought his grocery store from one of the Baines's sons in 1956 - Tirzah and Eric rented Bank house from his father, old Mr Baines. Tirzah describes village life there in the 1930s, giving me at least the back story of the out-of-the-way place that nurtured me and lives in my memory as a kind of rough, rural idyll.She wrote this autobiography in the early 1940s, in the shadow of the cancer that was eventually to kill her, aged 43, still mourning the death of Eric who disappeared, aged 39, with the crew of his plane on the coast of Iceland (or was it Greenland?) at the start of the war, leaving her with three young children and little money to live on. Her daughter Ann has supplemented it with letters and diary entries and fragments from other sources to provide a continuous narrative, and has combined two versions; she has done an excellent editing job, with the help of her own children and the wider family. She likens it to Gwen Reverat's celebrated memoir 'Period Piece' and that feels right, though I think Tirzah's is the more moving of the two. It's also in the tradition of 'Lark Rise to Candleford' and Laurie Lee's 'Cider with Rosie', while having its own distinctive voice.We move from Eastbourne where she went to art school in the twenties and met Eric, to Hammersmith were they lived after they married, to Gt Bardfield, as part of the community of artist there. Tirzah was a woodcutter, and the examples of her work that marks the chapters in this Persephone edition show how good she was; but with three children to bring up, she gave this up. Much of the thirties they spent in Hedingham; from there they moved to another Essex village, Shalford, often living in rather primitive farm buildings, often poor and making do. After Eric disappeared, she moved back to London and Eastbourne, eventually remarrying. She became a painter in her later years, discovering a happiness in doing this which mitigated somewhat the blight of her increasingly poor health.Her written voice is frank, artless, apparently simple, with no literary pretentions, informed with a keen visual memory. Though she has periods of acute unhappiness, she writes without self-pity, with balance and perception. As she takes us into the complications of her life with Eric, the pain his love affairs gave her, and the acute pleasure and pain of her own love affair with the Bardfield painter John Aldridge, the narrative takes on an added depth and richness, showing what a good writer she was. Neither Eric nor Edward Bawden - or John Aldridge come to that - come out of this narrative all that well; she tells the truth of those around her with a clear-eyed judgement, but there's no blaming here, no lingering resentments or point-scoring, and she's just as hard on herself. Only one small quibble: there are so many aunts, sisters, relatives, painters, friends here, referred to by their Christian names in the main, a cast list would have been a great help.It's taken 70 years for this wonderful, nostalgic autobiography- a very English one - to see the light of day. I'm sure it will become a classic.

Although by no means a great literary work, this autobiography of Tirzah Garwood, the wife of artist Eric Ravilious, is a very interesting book. The autobiography has been compiled by the daughter, Anne Ullman, nee Ravilious, from an original manuscript by Tirzah, supplemented towards the end by letters and recollections of friends, in order to bridge a two-year gap in the narrative.Tirzah Garwood provides a fascinating insight into the life of her family and her married life with Ravilious, living in London and then in various villages in Essex in and around Great Bardfield. Both Ravilious and Garwood conducted fairly open affairs during their marriage and these are described without rancour, although Tirzah clearly suffered a great deal and really only appeared to embark upon her own affair with John Aldridge (a Great Bardfield artist) in response to the infidelities of her husband. Many other entertaining details of their impecunious life in Essex in the 1930s and 40s are revealed including, despite their lack of money, an almost obsessive routine of domestic visiting and entertaining.Garwood is quite direct in her descriptions of people in their circle and it is this directness and willingness to pass judgement that gives the book its importance. It would otherwise be hard to know about the rather difficult and not very pleasant personality of close artist friend Edward Bawden. In fact, many of the key characters including Ravilious and Garwood herself, do not come out of this ‘warts and all’ autobiography very well.The constant references to a plethora of people including family, friends, villagers and other acquaintances by their Christian names certainly taxes the reader’s ability to remember who they all are and can be rather tiresome at times. Annotated footnotes or a cast of characters would have been a great help. Likewise, a list of key places or a map would also help as these are often referred to by house name, e.g. ‘Furlongs’, ‘Brick House’, ‘Bank’ etc., and you can forget who the owners are.This book is very nicely produced by the publisher Persephone, with Garwood endpapers and beautiful full-page illustrations for each new chapter, and the customary grey covers. To reiterate, this is not a great literary work, and probably only devotees of the Ravilious & Co. circle of artists or residents of the Essex villages described, will find it entirely satisfactory.

Fascinating.

Very interesting and a good read

book was better than expected and has made me want to read more about these artists.prompt delivery. very pleased.