Reviews for Sibley & Dowell

The average rating for Sibley & Dowell based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-19 00:00:00 Agnes J. Slavinski A worthwhile read, despite the old fashioned title. Stuart Cloete writes with the skill of a true writer and the insight of a man who has lived and seen a lot. This was the time into which I had been born and in whose death-throes I participated. He writes with nostalgia about his childhood. Every now and then he digresses with discussions about society "then" compared to "now”, making comparisons with how it was "then" (early 1900s) compared to "now" (early 1970s) He explains how he thinks experiences shaped him into the man he became. Although Stuart Cloete saw himself as a middleclass Englishman, he was born in Paris and grew up in France, spending his childhood in Paris and his teenage years in the small village Condette near Hardelot. This is what he says about his French upbringing: I consider myself very fortunate in being brought up in France. I spoke French as well as English, but most important of all, I learnt to work. The French people in those days really worked. At Hardelot all the cupboards built in our house were made at night by a carpenter who worked elsewhere all day. Often in the summer when I got up early to take my dog out I found all the washing, including sheets, already drying on the line by five o’clock. These industrious examples developed in me the ability to work hard and fast for long hours. Certainly I remember talk of the Commune and riots on May Day when the cobbles of the streets were torn up and used as missiles, and barricades were flung across some of the boulevards. One thing I remember about these conflicts between the workers and authority, was that neither side was prepared to walk home. And that all hostilities stopped before the last Métro ran. Strikers, communists, police, troops and firemen all bought their tickets and went home on the same train. The French are a very admirable people, logical and civilized. The happy nostalgic descriptions of a pampered childhood and carefree youth in the French countryside are followed by his going into the army at the age of 17 to fight in WWI. He writes candidly about his experience as a WWI officer in which he was wounded twice, the second time very seriously. He says what he wrote about the war was not to describe the war but to "show the impact on the character of an individual" and his comments on it, although not unique, do provide food for thought. There is no doubt the devastation the war had on his generation. The world was changed afterwards. A comment that I found interesting was: “By now (April 1918) the British were very tired, the French were exhausted to the point of mutiny. There is no doubt that the Americans won the war, although it took me twenty years to see it. … Thirty years later I changed my mind again and now think it might have been better if the Americans had not come in and the war had become a stalemate with a negotiated peace which would still have left Germany a great power.” Sometime, I hope to get around to reading: The Gambler: An Autobiography Volume 2, 1920-1939.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-16 00:00:00 Robert Dewar This guy is a direct descendant of one Jacob Cloete, who came out to South Africa in 1652 with Jan Van Riebeek and the very first settlers. I know this because he was my grandfather's cousin. Reading it made me feel like I wasn't the only black sheep in the family! What a life he lived. The thing is, he doesn't know any of this until the day before he goes to fight in the trenches in the First World War. He doesn't even know his surname is Cloete. He thinks it's Graham. But then his dad (my grandfather's uncle) comes to him and says "Listen son. Your name's actually Cloete. I had to change it and move from England to France cos I got into shit with business." Anyway, off he goes and fights, gets badly injured and spends a long time in hospital where he falls in love with an Irish nurse. After the war they marry and they spend about 7 or 8 years on a little plot of land in France growing veggies and stuff. But it slowly eats away at him. Who is he? What is the rest of his family up to down there at the bottom tip of Africa? So he leaves, and spends the next ten years or so managing farms for family members all over South Africa. At the age of 39, he decides "Fuck this. I'm going to be a writer!" Now he never even finished school, but he goes back to France and holes himself up somewhere for a year and writes a novel on the Great Trek in South Africa that gets banned here for about 45 years but immediately becomes a number one best seller in America! He gets catapulted into fame and spends a few years shamelessly philandering around while churning out racy novels with a dark twist set in various parts of Africa. I think by the time he died in the early 70s he'd written about 50 books. What a guy. I read this book at the age of 39 and decided Fuck that? Why must I be a photographer my whole life? I'm going to become a songwriter. Which is exactly what I did.