Sift: Memories of Childhood

Sift is the memoir of writer and poet Lawrence Sail's formative years in post-war Exeter. Sail paints a wonderfully evocative picture of British life in the 1940s and 50s, while exploring the richness and bafflements of a child's life. Most families know the true history of time and chance the sift of who and what survives, what is spoken of or glossed over; the stubborn objects outliving their owners passion for them; the oddities of fashion; the co-editing of memory, forgetfulness and the need to forget...

About the Author :
Lawrence Sail is a freelance writer who was brought up, and still lives, in Exeter.He read French and German at St John’s College, Oxford, taught for four years in Kenya, then held various teaching posts in England. He has been a visiting reader and lecturer for the British Council in various countries, including Bosnia, Colombia, Egypt, France, India, Kenya, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Ukraine. In 2012 he recorded a selection of his work for The Poetry Archive and a number of his poems, including a sequence on the theme of silence, have been set to music. He has been chairman of the Arvon Foundation and programme director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.  He was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1992, and an Arts Council Writer’s Bursary the following year. He was on the management committee of the Society of Authors from 2007 to 2011 and, in 2011, president of the U.K. jury for the European Literature Prize.  In 2004 he received a Cholmondeley Award for his poetry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Review :
"A most compelling read the intensity of detail, the moments of drama, the sense of the post-war period and, above all, it is marvellously written." Penelope Lively "Sift is a brilliantly atmospheric recreation of a post-war childhood. Lawrence Sail explores the absence of his German artist father, his mother's determination to bring up her twins singlehanded, and his own heritage in a memoir which is beautifully written, candid, funny and moving." Helen Dunmore ‘The secrets of family history and childhood experience build to a powerful and moving evocation of a time largely lost.’ – William Bedford, The Warwick Review