In the Blood cover art

In the Blood

A Memoir of My Childhood

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In the Blood

By: Andrew Motion
Narrated by: Andrew Motion
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About this listen

In the Blood is Andrew Motion's beautifully written memoir of growing up in post-war England—an unforgettable evocation of family life, school life and country life. It also tells the story of how these worlds are shattered, when his mother suffers a terrible riding accident.

The tragedy shadows the book, feeding its mood of elegy as well as its celebratory vigilance. Written from a teenage child's point of view, without the benefit of adult hindsight, Motion captures the pathos and puzzlement of childhood with great clarity of expression and freshness of memory. We encounter a strange but beguiling extended family, a profound love of the natural world, a troubled schooling and a growing passion for books and writing.

By turns funny and elegiac, In the Blood is a wonderful picture of a vanishing England, a remarkable insight into a poet's mind, and a deeply moving portrait of the bond between a mother and her son.

©2006 Andrew Motion (P)2006 W F Howes Motherhood Parenting & Families Relationships Funny
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but found it oddly unengaging. The random anecdotes of family members one really didn’t care about are impossible to identify with (to me). Possibly their lifestyle was so privileged as to be too far outside my own experience. Andrew Motion reads pleasantly enough, but I found it a dull and precious
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