Me Jane

In Me Jane, author Jane Waller presents an unusual account of childhood in 1950s England. Using first her mother’s diaries and later her own, she evokes clear memories of those far-off days, so different from now. She explores the thoughts and feelings of a child living in the countryside, beginning at age four. Waller was then sent to a rather demanding boarding school in Surrey (complete with mad matron and flasher). Her recollections take her through her teenage years, including a desperate search for a boyfriend, until, at seventeen, she becomes a beatnik and heads off to study art in Oxford. Waller also tells how those in power—a subject not taught in schools—deprived Aylesbury of a beautiful Georgian house and grounds that had taken the family seven years to completely restore, but that were subsequently destroyed by a road-widening scheme, an event that broke apart the marriage of her parents. Poignant and personal, this memoir presents a story of childhood in the UK in the mid-twentieth century and the shifts that altered her and her family forever.