Playing tennis with starched whites with the other English administrators and then chatting over G and Ts in the tropical warm of the evening in an old Dutch fort on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka in the first decade of the twentieth century... Getting to know the Sinhalese of the Kandy region through hearing their complaints, intrigues, and travails in their own language as a defacto judge... As I read through this memoir I felt like I was sitting around the fire with Woolf in his last years (back in the sixties I think) and hearing stories from an educated, unconventional and honest English chap about a life lived in the twilight of the British Empire in Ceylon. And getting to know the Sri Lanka I've visited myself a few times better through hearing about the life and culture of people prior to much modernisation that took place over the twentieth century. Worth the price of admission for me.

"All that I was taking with me from the old life and for a contribution to the new, and to prepare me for the task of helping to rule the British Empire. was 90 large, beautifully printed volumes of Voltaire and a wire-haired terrier." I am becoming a fan. Just started this volume and it's a small emotional roller-coaster to be honest. ( )

A cooler volume of Leonard Woolf's biography, although interesting in many aspects, I felt more held at a distance. He very much comes across as a young man with an important job, who wants to do well. He is more brittle than in his college years where he is surrounded by his friends. By his own admission he found himself in an imperialist position, something that he hadn't thought about when setting out, and ultimately a state that he finds himself uncomfortable in, on a personal level, as opposed to on the level of how he was able to function.

Something that makes me warm to him is his admission that writing autobiography leaves any writer open to inaccuracies, flawed memories, singular perceptions and misunderstandings. When he feels he was good at something he says so, but he also reminds the reader that others may view things differently. He also admits when he gets things wrong, or is uncertain of specific memories. ( )

In the feudal society of Ceylon "I felt that there was some depth of happiness rather than pleasure, of satisfaction, . . . which the western world is losing or has lost." (p 158)

Judgments such as these in the context of this autobiography seem to me very valuable. Not because they are true, but because they illustrate one individual perspective that can be charted across 80 years of recent history. ( )

This is the second book Leonard Woolf wrote of his life. He is a graceful author, and a sensitive man. Good look into an aristocratic young britisher and his growing up.