Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

MY mother took us abroad to stay at my grandfather's house in Germany five times between my second and twelfth year. Then he died, and we never went again. He owned a big old manor-house at Deisenhofen, ten miles from Munich; by name 'Laufzorn', which means 'Begone, anger! ' Our summers there were easily the best things of my early childhood. Pine forests and hot sun, red deer, black and red squirrels, acres of blueberries and wild strawberries; nine or ten different kinds of edible mushrooms which we went into the forest to pick, and unfamiliar flowers in the fields - Munich lies high, and outcrops of Alpine flowers occur here and there; a farm with all the usual animals except sheep; drives through the countryside in a brake behind my grandfather's greys; and bathing in the Isar under a waterfall. The Isar was bright green, and said to be the fastest river of Europe.

We used to visit the uncles who kept a peacock farm a few miles away; and a grand-uncle, Johannes von Ranke, the ethnologist, who lived on the lakeshore of Tegernsee, where everyone had buttercup-blonde hair; and occasionally my Aunt Agnes, Freifrau Baronin von Aufsess of Aufsess Castle, some hours away by train, high up in the Bavarian Alps.