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THIS HOUSE HAD WINDOWS by David Scott Blackhall

THIS HOUSE HAD WINDOWS

By

Pub Date: Aug. 27th, 1962
Publisher: Ivan Obolensky

Ostensibly the autobiography of a man who went blind in middle life, this book has also several chapters that were originally inspirational talks on the B.B.C., as well as a good deal of the author's poetry. Mr. Blackhall has worked in British local government all his life, having started from working class origins as a tailor's son in a Staffordshire town. For those who don't know what. It was like, fifty years ago, for such a boy to graduate into the middle class, here is where they can find out. In his mid-thirties, Mr. Blackhall lost the sight in one eye, and ten years later became totally blind. His account of the incompetent nursing he received in a famous London eye hospital is just barely credible, until one remembers that this was during the war, and in those days it was safer to stay home and die than to go to an understaffed hospital. Mr. Blackhall's autobiographical chapters, whether about his childhood or his experiences as a blind man, are the best of the book. His poetry will please only those with quite simple, traditional tastes. The author is obviously a terribly nice man who deserved to be really talented, but also it seems the talented are always a little nasty, and the nice, merely nice. Readers of this tik will find this book completely satisfying.