The Beautiful Years is a tender evocation of West Country childhood in the golden years before the First World War. It is also the first volume in Henry Williamson's tetralogy The Flax of Dream . All four volumes - The Beautiful Years , Dandelion Days , The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway - are being reissued in Faber Finds, and together they make up the life story of Willie Maddison. The Flax of Dream is one of the major literary achievements of the twentieth century.