Dora saint biography

Miss Read, or Dora Saint, to give her real name, wrote novels about the life of two fictional villages, Thrush Green and Fairacre. They are gentle, well-observed books about village life, and the Fairacre books feature a schoolteacher, Miss Read.Dora Saint moved from London to Chelsfield in March 1921 at the age of seven, and attended the village school until 1924.

This period in her life informed much of her writing. There is an evocative account of her years as a child at Chelsfield in her memoir, “Time Remembered”, with attractive line drawings by Derek Crowe.

Jill saint daughter of miss read

The white timbered building on the front of the book is Cross Hall, just in front of the school. The move to Chelsfield was prompted by her mother’s poor health. Dora too had been ill; she had suffered from Spanish flu during the epidemic that followed the Great War.

The rural environment was thought to be more suitable for the family. They lived on Chelsfield Hill, in a house called Bramleigh (demolished in 2014 to make wa