Great Meadow

Dirk Bogarde reads a volume of autobiography which evokes an idyllic childhood in the 1930s. Life in a remote cottage on the Sussex Downs with his sister Elizabeth and their devoted nanny, Lally, provided the happiest days of Bogarde's childhood. At Great Meadow he discovered Mrs Wardle, the witch, scrambled down the legs of the giant Long Man (mysteriously cut deep into the hillside) and savoured snowy Christmases and golden summers. He recalls a lost world of oil lamps, harvest gleaning and privies, and a time of love and gentleness in the untroubled years before World War II.