Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE EYE OF THE WIND by Peter Scott

THE EYE OF THE WIND

By

Pub Date: Oct. 24th, 1961
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

In an age when the fabulous in fiction has become demode, it's only natural for life to cast the old heroic mold. And the Eye Of The Wind does just that. Peter in his autobiography appears to have been everywhere, known everybody and done practically everything, at least everything that's printable. A sportsman, an artist, a naturalist, an adventurer, a hunter, a war hero, the founder of England's Wildfowl Trust and a happily married man to boot, he should give most readers an inferiority complex but more likely his engaging personality, his spectacularly clean living, unlimited success, battleground excursions and easy narrative skill will enchant all those looking for escapist literature, a in which ironically enough this true story must be placed. Anyway, as of the famous and Ill-fated Scott of Antaretica, young Peter was never kept under wraps. He was expected to do things and he did, from childhood stag shooting to yacht -gunning and zoology studies at Cambridge, down through the Dieppe Raid and in the Atlantic campaign. Names, lands and tales are sprinkled like : friends Shaw, , Wells, Raden-Powell, Axel Munthe, Elizabeth Bergner; expeditions via Mesopotamia, , Fiji; and front page winnings at the 1936 Olympics. and profusely illustrated with the author's drawings, paintings, sketches and , this moves in both a technicolored whirlwind and a smooth, sunny haze.