This page

contains an idiosyncratic, unfinished account of Richard Perceval Graves's personal background. Here you can see him in 1950 as a child of four at Rottingdean, Sussex, standing by the village pond and waiting for the tide to come in.

     I was born in Brighton on 21 December 1945, within sight and smell of the sea, and almost within earshot of the unforgettable and to me wonderful crunching noise made as anyone walks over that shingled shore. Yes, Brighton has always appealed to me enormously. Although I have never lived there, I have visited it or passed through it many times, and I hope to go there again many more times before I die.

     When we were children, how exciting it was, driving into Brighton past their incredibly well-manicured public gardens full of blooming flowers, and then into the busier town centre, to catch between tall buildings our first sight of the sea. "qalassa!" My father used to cry out in Ancient Greek, remembering that famous moment in Greek history when Xenophon and his exhausted warriors finally reached the sea. "Thalassa! Thalassa! The sea! The sea!" And beneath the blue of the sky there was that desperately exciting patch of darker, deeper blue... But perhaps after all I had better begin at the beginning.

To be continued...