THOSE Blue Remembered Hills by Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington. Published by The Memoir Club, County Durham. £16.99. ISBN: 1-84104-054-1 IT WOULD be fair to say that for many of us, living in a castle would not be considered a burden or some sort of imprisonment.

But most of us are not like Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington a highly complex and challenging character whose ideals are beautifully simple.

Those Blue Remembered Hills is an entertaining, funny, informative and self-indulgent autobiography, smattered with poetry, of a man who is king' of Muncaster Castle in West Cumbria.

The image of Muncaster, standing defiantly between the Lake District and the sea, becomes comparable with its reluctant owner who stands aloof of a world scarred by industrial life, declining morals and the destruction of culture. Instead, he chooses the simplicity of the countryside and its people.

The early section of the book recounts, at times through childlike eyes, a youth brimming with the sights, smells, taste and touch of the countryside in the Scottish hills.

As his life progresses stints at Eton, Oxford and a period of National Service the countryside was never far away, particularly his love for shooting.

But adulthood brought his country passions together with politics as he moved into farming a period of his life where Cumbria featured heavily.

Marrying wife Phyllida Pennington brought him to the 23,000 acre Muncaster Castle estate, which the couple later inherited and turned into a tourist attraction visited by 80,000 people a year.

Reluctantly leaving the Scottish hills for the castle, G-D-P became a major player in Cumbrian farming as county chairman of the Cumbria branch of the National Farmers' Union and an appointed member of the Lake District Special Planning Board.

The book ends on a rather depressing note with G-D-P looking forward to his death and confessing: "I have had enough".

But he then finishes with another halcyon image of his childhood, among nature, where he was only ever truly happy.

Such shifts in emotions reflect the book itself a myriad of ups and downs and beautiful scenes from someone signing off in the same uncompromising and outspoken way he has lived his life.

Luke Dicicco