Memoir of the Fens

Pauline Tambling was a distinguished advocate for the Arts in schools and in education, with a career spanning school teaching, working for the Royal Opera House as its first Education Officer, running a section of the Arts Council, and working in Creative and cultural Skills. This personal memoir gives a clue as to her motivations in believing so much in the power of education, by giving an account of her first eighteen years, as a child in the Fens, then, as now, a neglected corner of England, and with a home in Ely. The book is an account of rural poverty, of forgotten lives, of lives that could never quite make it, of perseverance an hope and it is full of wonderful details about growing up in Cambridgeshire, and its opportunities and the education for life it offered. Told with humour and charm, the book is a wonderful opportunity to explore how lives could blossom in such hard conditions, and how essential music, drama, dance, and education were in such a life.