A Bundle from Britain

Horne ( Macmillan: 1957 - 1986 ) was evacuated to the U.S. at the outbreak of WW II, when he was 14. In this occasionally witty but anticlimactic memoir, he describes the three years (1940-1943) he spent living with John and Rossy Cutler and their family, of Ganison, N.Y. No Highlanders could be ``more fiercely clannish'' than these Yankees, he writes of his hosts, who generously cared for and educated their ``bundle from Britain.'' Drawing on scrapbooks left by his mother Auriol--who had died when he was a baby--Horne prefaces his U.S. reminiscences with his own family history, describing his childhood in harsh British ``public'' schools. The Cutlers sent Horne to Millbrook, a sylvan New York State boarding school, where he thrived and befriended future writer and publisher William F. Buckley, although he disagreed with Buckley's isolationist position regarding U.S. involvement in the war. Despite the difficulty of adjusting to a new home and the pain of missing his father, Horne recalls his American adolescence with prim, sometimes cloying affection and gratitude. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)