Katharine West

Inner and Outer Circles

Cohen & West, 1958.

I was sung to sleep by roaring lions; I was woken by the staccato bark of sea-lions. And while there must sometimes, even in those early days, have been a hoot or a backfire from a passing motor car, the only sounds I remember were animal rather than mechanical. Horses clip-clopped along the road. Life Guards from the Albany Barracks passed daily on their circuit of the Outer Circle. Even the seasonal lawn mower, though it filled summer afternoons with the drowsy murmur of machinery, was pulled by a horse with padded shoes

The author was born in 1900 in a house in Sussex Place, described in pages 1-11, and lived there until 1913. Childhood memories of Regent's Park are recounted, as are visits to the Zoo, fêtes in the Botanical Garden and the Cart Horse Parade on Whit Monday.