That Was Life! ;My Lifetime's Searchended When I Read in a Brochure: Esther Rantzen Lived Here ; Esther Rantzen Ends a Poignant Search for Her Childhood Home

Summary

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My grandmother Emily loved poetry. 'I remember, I remember, the house where I was born,' she would recite with dramatic eloquence, rolling her Rs. Like most babies these days, I was born in a hospital, and there isn't the same resonance to 'I remember, I remember, the cottage hospital now closed down where I was born by caesarean section'.

All the same, Thomas Hood's poem gave me a feeling that my first home must have engraved a special place in my psyche. And visiting that house for the first time 60 years and much searching later, I realise it has.

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That Was Life! ;My Lifetime's Searchended When I Read in a Brochure: Esther Rantzen Lived Here ; Esther Rantzen Ends a Poignant Search for Her Childhood Home

Whitelea was my grandmother's home in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. It is the house where I was almost born, in that I arrived there when a few days old in 1940. I left when I was five, but it marked itself indelibly on my heart. My family had been Londoners for generations, but revisiting Whitelea I discovered how much of my own taste was created by the atmosphere of that lovely Edwardian house in the country.

My grandp...

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