Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switch
Gift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingA Tuscan Childhood
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreThe enchantments of the Tuscan countryside are captured in this memoir of the idyllic Bohemian life the author shared with her family in their Italian castle in the years between the two world wars.
When Kinta Beevor was five years old, her father, the painter Aubrey Waterfield, and her mother, a writer, settled their family into a castle near the Tuscan village of Aulla. It became the center of an artistic world that included D. H. Lawrence, Robert Trevelyan, and Rex Whistler. While the adults wrote and painted, Kinta and her brother explored the castle and the nearby Florentine villa of their great-aunt Janet Ross. They helped with the grape and olive harvests, accompanied the stonemason in his search for wild mushrooms, learned how to “tickle trout.” They spent their summers in tents in the mountains, with shepherds and their charcoal burners. The family fled at the approach of war, which destroyed the town and damaged the castle. But Kinta would return to witness the courage and skill of the Tuscan people as they rebuilt the castle, the town, their lives, and her memories.
Engaging, lyrical, and witty, A Tuscan Childhood evokes the splendors of rural Italy and what it was like to be a child blissfully ensconced there.
Kinta Beevor was born in 1911 in Northbourne, England, and died in 1995. A Tuscan Childhood, published in Great Britain in 1993, was her only book.
Originally from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Northeast England, audiobook narrator Pearl Hewitt currently lives with her husband and two children in Houston, Texas. Over the years she has worked as a customer service rep, a teaching assistant, and a teacher, but deep down there was always a performer wanting to get out. In 2007 her twelve-year-old son told her that he believed she was so good at reading stories out loud that she should do that as a job. That was her defining, eureka! moment, and she's never looked back. Pearl discovered the world of voice-overs and pursued a career in voice acting. She attended workshops, training seminars, and conferences, and began volunteering as the resident mystery and suspense narrator for Houston Sight-Into-Sound Radio, where her work earned numerous IAAIS awards for narration and production. In 2012 Pearl decided to focus on audiobooks, and her professional career blossomed while working directly with authors and narrating for a number of major publishers. Pearl's voice is perfectly suited to British Regency romance and cozy murder mysteries, but her personal favorites are the classics, especially children's literature.
Reviews
“[Pays] loving tribute to a way of life that truly seems eternal.”
“A thoroughly charming memoir of a childhood in Italy between the world wars.”
Expand reviews