Martin Knebel

Martin Seeks The Meaning of Life Martin Knebel

Martin Seeks the Meaning of Life is an autobiography filled with rich turns of phrase, describing commerce in all its "marginal honesty" and of the immense pleasure in producing a poem, likening it to the satisfaction a hen appears to feel when it lays an egg! From this it is easy to intuit that this is no run-of-the-mill memoir - it is full of historical interest and references, and wry personal anecdotes. It tells of a much older brother who wrote to TS Eliot to get a job at the publisher, Faber & Faber, and an older sister who was a remarkable artist and who was admitted to St Martins School of Art at the age of 14; and of parents who started life in the east end of London and their progress through a 'Tolstoyan colony' in the Cotswolds. It tells of life with a gamekeeper in a tower, of the forestry and timber trades, of religion in the form of the Oxford Group, of twelve years running a stately home, and of sailing many times down the Bay of Biscay. This is a story of the colourful lives of many remarkable people, but mostly it gives a deep insight into the life of the author, a poet who wrote 'Funny Old World' and who elucidates further on that concept in this, his autobiography.