{"product_id":"2026200014362-secondhand-home-away-an-autobiographical-gambit","title":"Home \u0026 Away: An Autobiographical Gambit","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Tanning and foxing\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Pudney — poet, novelist, and RAF veteran — presents one of the most disarmingly candid self-portraits in mid-twentieth-century British letters with Home \u0026amp; Away: An Autobiographical Gambit. The work unfolds as a series of reflective, essayistic pieces that move between the domestic and the far-flung, charting the contours of a life lived with restless curiosity — from the English countryside of his youth to the wider world encountered through war, journalism, and literature. Rather than a conventional memoir, it is precisely what its subtitle promises: a gambit, an opening move in an honest and sometimes unsettling reckoning with memory, identity, and belonging.\n\nPudney writes with the controlled lyricism and wry observational precision that distinguish his finest poetry, bringing the same economy of language to prose that made his wartime verse — most famously For Johnny — resonate with an entire generation. Thematically, the book grapples with the tension between rootedness and wandering, the public man and the private self, the England that shaped him and the broader world that challenged those formations. For readers drawn to the rich tradition of British literary autobiography — sitting comfortably alongside the reflective prose of V.S. Pritchett or Robert Graves — this volume rewards with its intelligence, warmth, and an underlying melancholy that lingers long after the final page.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49161027322075,"sku":"2026200014362-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/3429eadd-a5cf-485f-ab39-ae63cf28e116.png?v=1787189389","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200014362-secondhand-home-away-an-autobiographical-gambit","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}