Robert Young

The Wild Hills Robert Young

This latest volume of autobiography opens in 1934, in an isolated hamlet in the Cotswolds. Mr. Croft-Gooke was 30 years old. He had published six novels, was earning £300 a year, and considered himself 'an enviable young man'. He had a house with peacocks on the lawn. He was happy. He decided however to revisit Argentina, where he travelled extensively, lecturing and meeting old friends and new. When he returned to his isolated hamlet, in fog and snow, he was no longer happy, but restless and unsettled. He decided to go back to Kent, where he was born.

With charm and humour, Mr. Croft-Cooke vividly re-creates the places and people of his youth. As a reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement wrote: 'Social historians of the future will do well to consult Mr. Croft-Cooke's in preference to certain more pretentious and less objective memoirs of the period.'

About the Author: The English author Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-1979) published 30-odd novels on a wide variety of subjects in his lifetime, as well as poetry, plays, nonfiction books on such diverse topics as Buffalo Bill, Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, Victorian writers, criminals, the circus, gypsies, wine, cookery, and darts. Under the pen name of Leo Bruce he also wrote more than 30 crime novels. At the age of 20, Croft-Cooke spent two years in Buenos Aires, where he founded the journal La Estrella. In 1925 he returned to London and began a career as a freelance journalist and writer. His work appeared in a variety of magazines, including New Writing, Adelphi, and the English Review.

In the late 1920s the American magazine Poetry published several of his plays. He was also a radio broadcaster on psychology. In 1940 he joined the British Army and served in Africa and India until 1946. He later wrote several books about his military experiences. From 1953 to 1968 Croft-Cooke lived in Morocco where he wrote his Sensual World series, possibly his most important contribution to English letters, written as a series of 27 autobiography-cum-travel books.