Ruth Fainlight was born in 1931 to a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in the Bronx, New York. Her parents were immigrants from England and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; she had one younger brother, Harry. In 1936, when she was five, her father moved the family back to London – “absolutely batty”, she says – and was called up; the family was evacuated to Wales before sailing back to America in 1940 to live with her mother’s sister in Arlington, Virginia. When the war ended, they returned to England. Fainlight and her brother were sent to grammar schools where it quickly became clear that she was naturally academic. At 15, she was a voracious reader; loved TS Eliot, Emily Brontë and Milton. “I was terribly competitive,” she says, “but only with myself.” (Helen Bain)
BBC News features the writers-in-residence at Elizabeth Gaskell's House in Manchester.
The Brotnë Sisters UK YouTube channel shares some of her personal Brontë collection—books, keepsakes...
0 comments:
Post a Comment