George was born into a world of village cricket matches and fox-hunting, but his failing income and the onset of war threatens his way of life. A touching depiction of pre-First World War Britain, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is also a coming-of-age story which follows George from a shy and awkward childhood, through shiftless adolescence, to an officer just beginning to understand the horrors of trench warfare. Written after Siegfried Sassoon's return from the First World War but looking back at happier times,Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man was published anonymously in 1928. Already established as a poet, this was Sassoon's first attempt at fiction - and Faber & Faber's first bestseller.