There have been two biographies of Roy Cambell- by [Joseph Pearce] and [Peter Alexander] but this is Campbell's autobiography covering the period from the year of his birth in 1901 until 1935 and his involvement in the Spanish Civil War in Toledo when he hid Carmelite monks and later had to deal with the aftermath of their arrest. He is telling the story of his life his way and its a rambling, raconteur type of book in which characters are dropped in as part of memory, though the spine is more or less loosely chronological. Campbell has strong opinions about people and presents himself as the rather loud, romantic boasting hero of every situation. I enjoyed the reminiscences about his childhood in Durban as this was my husband's home town and his parents were the contemporaries of Campbell. Holidays in early Rhodesia and his description of the Matopos are lyrically related. Campbell presents himself as a linguist , interpreter and paternalist in the world of the African. The He left South Africa in 1918 as a young man to study at Oxford (clearly not a successful project, though that was not his account). He returned to South Africa but the sojourn was a literary disaster. His life was more exciting in France, Spain, Portugal and England. He enjoyed strong friendships with artist (Augustus John painted his portrait)and writers but also developed lasting emnities. He was bombastic, prejudiced and self opinionated. His poetry though was inspiring. Read "Horses of the Camargue" if you want to capture his enduring poetry.

If you have ever travelled in Spain and been touched by the horror of the history of the Spanish Civil War and the deep wounds left, Campbell is a writer and poet to read and understand. He was a contraversial figure in his lifetime because he slated the ways and values of the Bloomsbury Group ( his wife Mary had an affair with Vita Sackville West with Virginia Woolf being the ousted lover). He also became a supporter of Franco and was almost alone among his literary and political contemporaries in taking us such a fascist position. He became a Roman Catholic and endured much in Toledo. He was a romantic - something of an Ernest Hemingway type of African figure. His wartime exploits in the second world war show him to have been a fearless and brave man. He drank (too heavily) with Dylan Thomas ( the dust wrapper carries a promotional blurb by Thomas)- and alcoholism and disabling injury to a hip aged him prematurely. He claims a friendship with George Orwell and he was definitely friends with Laurie Lee. It is Lee who has written the sympathetic foreword in this 1969 edition of the Campbell autobiography ( the first edition came out in 1951 before Campbell's death in a car crash in 1957 at the relatively young age of 56. He's reputation is that of the most important South African poet of the 20th century. The autobiography is a pleasurable read , but should not be read as gospel truth. It shows that Campbell could write prose as well as poetry and it deserves to remain in print as a work of Anglo-African 20th century life and interesting time. To form a more balanced picture the autobiography should be read together with the Alexander biography. ( )