An excellent short memoir, recalling the magic of his childhood on Majorca, but also showing how hard it is to live with such a father.

William Graves's forthright memoir not only gives a sharp account of Father's foibles but offers a fuller evocation of the swiftly changing scene at Deyá and Palma than in Robert's sketchy Majorca Observed.

In Wild Olives, William, the eldest son of Robert Graves's second marriage, has given us a delightful, personal account of life with father after the family's return to Majorca - all the local intrigues, litigation and gossip interlaced with vivid descriptions of the mental processes by which Graves imagined himself back into the past or made mercurially intuitive connections like some kind of literary Sherlock Holmes

'The richness is almost overwhelming, and I am awed by Jones's reading...hugely enjoyable'

'Explains the workings of evolution, as they are now understood, with beautiful clarity and, naturally, with a lot more fun and jokes than Darwin ever allowed himself. The book is a pleasure to read'

'A clever book about serious ideas that can happily be read on the beach'

'Exhilarating'

'As enthralling in its own way as was Darwin's original'