> Skip to content
Woodbrook
  • Published: 5 July 1994
  • ISBN: 9780099359913
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99

Woodbrook




'Woodbrook is simply one of the most enchanting books I've read in a long time - it begins in delight before it ends in wisdom' - Seamus Heaney

Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. It has been owned since the seventeenth century by the Anglo-Irish Kirkwoods. In 1932, David Thomson, aged eighteen, went there are a tutor. He stayed for ten years.

This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves - for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil. In it he builds up a delicate, lyrical picture of a gentle pre-war society, of Irish history and troubled Anglo-Irish relations, and of a delightful family. Above all, his story reverberates with the enchantment of falling in love and with the desolation of bereavement.

  • Published: 5 July 1994
  • ISBN: 9780099359913
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99

Also by David Thomson

See all

Praise for Woodbrook

A brilliantly original mix of love-story, memoir and history

Brian Moore

It remains with one long after the story is told, a haunting sadness, a memory and a dream

Olivia Manning, Spectator