1PatrickMurtha
New here. Pocket bio: Retired humanities teacher, residing in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with two dogs and six indoor cats. Passionate about literature, history, philosophy, classical music and opera, jazz, cinema, and similar subjects. Nostalgic guy. Politically centrist. BA in American Studies from Yale; MAs in English and Education from Boston University. Born in northern New Jersey. Have lived and worked in San Francisco, Chicago, northern Nevada, northeast Wisconsin, South Korea.
A little project I have going is to read books about all the different English counties, including many old travel guides. A much newer account and an excellent one is Jules Pretty’s This Luminous Coast, which takes in the eastern coastal counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk.
A little project I have going is to read books about all the different English counties, including many old travel guides. A much newer account and an excellent one is Jules Pretty’s This Luminous Coast, which takes in the eastern coastal counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk.
2affle
>1 PatrickMurtha:
Welcome. I hope your post is picked up by member Willoyd, who likes reading round lists of place eg English counties and American states. I have a couple of suggested series you may like, both published by Robert Hale a good many years ago:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/109882/The-Village-Series
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/58954/the-portrait-series
both essentially topographical with a highly local focus.
Edited to add another old series which directly addresses your interest
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/50523/The-County-Books-Series
Welcome. I hope your post is picked up by member Willoyd, who likes reading round lists of place eg English counties and American states. I have a couple of suggested series you may like, both published by Robert Hale a good many years ago:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/109882/The-Village-Series
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/58954/the-portrait-series
both essentially topographical with a highly local focus.
Edited to add another old series which directly addresses your interest
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/50523/The-County-Books-Series
3PatrickMurtha
^ Those are great, thanks so much! I happen to be reading J.D. Marshall’s Portrait of Cumbria in the second series at the moment.
Some others I have enjoyed:
Arhur L. Salmon, The Cornwall Coast
H.J. Massingham, English Downland (although Massingham was a ruralist / quasi-Fascist eccentric who was simply uninterested in anything human-related less than a thousand years old * )
Roy Christian, Derbyshire (more recent, 1978. I also have his volume on Nottinghamshire at hand)
Herbert Tompkins, Marsh-Country Rambles
Herbert Tompkins, Highways and Byways in Hertfordshire
Herbert A. Evans, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds
* Charming villages? Roadside inns? Bah!
Some others I have enjoyed:
Arhur L. Salmon, The Cornwall Coast
H.J. Massingham, English Downland (although Massingham was a ruralist / quasi-Fascist eccentric who was simply uninterested in anything human-related less than a thousand years old * )
Roy Christian, Derbyshire (more recent, 1978. I also have his volume on Nottinghamshire at hand)
Herbert Tompkins, Marsh-Country Rambles
Herbert Tompkins, Highways and Byways in Hertfordshire
Herbert A. Evans, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds
* Charming villages? Roadside inns? Bah!
4PatrickMurtha
Here is my extended take on Massingham:
H.J. Massingham’s English Downland (1936) is emphatically not your nicey-nice “Let’s traipse the countryside” book. First of all, the prose is exceptionally dense, poetic, vocabularistic, round-aboutly phrased, and frequently quite beautiful: Not a casual read at all, the text calls for a high level of sentence-by-sentence concentration. Allied to and expressed through that heavy style is a fervency and near-mysticism about the chalk downs of England’s Salisbury Plain, extending through Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire, and harboring both Stonehenge and Avebury. The reader rightly begins to wonder if we are entering freaky territory: Was Massingham a bit of a nutter? Well…he was one of the most committed British ruralists, and for a half-century between the 1920s and 1960s, that movement overlapped considerably with fascism and the far right (think of the German right’s emphasis on the soil, the land, the folk). Not saying that Massingham was a fascist, but he was certainly proximate to…cases (Rolf Gardiner, Henry Williamson, Viscount Lymington, Jorian Jenks). And was deeply involved in the founding and administration of the Kinship in Husbandry and the later Soil Association, which included a number of those men (as well as others less politically hardcore). All of this is needless to say QUITE interesting.
H.J. Massingham’s English Downland (1936) is emphatically not your nicey-nice “Let’s traipse the countryside” book. First of all, the prose is exceptionally dense, poetic, vocabularistic, round-aboutly phrased, and frequently quite beautiful: Not a casual read at all, the text calls for a high level of sentence-by-sentence concentration. Allied to and expressed through that heavy style is a fervency and near-mysticism about the chalk downs of England’s Salisbury Plain, extending through Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire, and harboring both Stonehenge and Avebury. The reader rightly begins to wonder if we are entering freaky territory: Was Massingham a bit of a nutter? Well…he was one of the most committed British ruralists, and for a half-century between the 1920s and 1960s, that movement overlapped considerably with fascism and the far right (think of the German right’s emphasis on the soil, the land, the folk). Not saying that Massingham was a fascist, but he was certainly proximate to…cases (Rolf Gardiner, Henry Williamson, Viscount Lymington, Jorian Jenks). And was deeply involved in the founding and administration of the Kinship in Husbandry and the later Soil Association, which included a number of those men (as well as others less politically hardcore). All of this is needless to say QUITE interesting.
5affle
>3 PatrickMurtha:
There is a vast literature of Cumbria and the Lake District (of which I am a native); Marshall is of particular interest as a pioneer of academic regional studies, eventually with a post at the University of Lancaster. I have these other books by him: The Lake Counties from 1830, Furness and the Industrial revolution, and Industrial Archaeology of the Lake Counties.
A couple of other suggestions from among my own books that occur to me
The Country Diary of a Cheshire Man by A. W. Boyd, published 1946, but retrospective of the first half of the century; and
The South Country by Edward Thomas, later better known as a war poet - he was based in Hampshire in the years before the first war
There is a vast literature of Cumbria and the Lake District (of which I am a native); Marshall is of particular interest as a pioneer of academic regional studies, eventually with a post at the University of Lancaster. I have these other books by him: The Lake Counties from 1830, Furness and the Industrial revolution, and Industrial Archaeology of the Lake Counties.
A couple of other suggestions from among my own books that occur to me
The Country Diary of a Cheshire Man by A. W. Boyd, published 1946, but retrospective of the first half of the century; and
The South Country by Edward Thomas, later better known as a war poet - he was based in Hampshire in the years before the first war
6PatrickMurtha
^ Terrific! I have also become interested in obtaining the novels of Graham Sutton, which Marshall mentions admiringly. I already have copies of Melvyn Bragg’s Cumbrian Trilogy and Norman Nicholson’s Provincial Pleasures.
7affle
>6 PatrickMurtha:
The Sutton novels are tediously difficult to find - my understanding is that there was some family dispute that prevented their reprinting. Certainly all mine (consult my library) are all rather tatty first/early editions, painfully slowly acquired. Nicholson I think of primarily as a poet (England's best provincial poet, according to TS Eliot), Norman Nicholson's Lakeland gives an idea of the range of his prose writing, and includes a useful bibliography.
Thank you for the account of the Massingham book, which I shall look out for - in my long exile from my northern roots I have lived close to various parts of English downland. I am duly reminded of the dubious political background, with which I am familiar from Williamson.
You might care to look through the books of the Little Toller imprint, based in deepest Dorset. Although they have been branching out of late, their core offering is of reprints of English nature/rural classics from Richard Jefferies and WH Hudson onwards - they are worth acquiring, being particularly well made durable soft covers of attractive design
The Sutton novels are tediously difficult to find - my understanding is that there was some family dispute that prevented their reprinting. Certainly all mine (consult my library) are all rather tatty first/early editions, painfully slowly acquired. Nicholson I think of primarily as a poet (England's best provincial poet, according to TS Eliot), Norman Nicholson's Lakeland gives an idea of the range of his prose writing, and includes a useful bibliography.
Thank you for the account of the Massingham book, which I shall look out for - in my long exile from my northern roots I have lived close to various parts of English downland. I am duly reminded of the dubious political background, with which I am familiar from Williamson.
You might care to look through the books of the Little Toller imprint, based in deepest Dorset. Although they have been branching out of late, their core offering is of reprints of English nature/rural classics from Richard Jefferies and WH Hudson onwards - they are worth acquiring, being particularly well made durable soft covers of attractive design
8PatrickMurtha
^ Thanks for all the information! The Massingham is very different from the run of such books, will fascinate some and repel others.
I would buy the Suttons in rough condition at the lowest possible prices and have them prettily rebound here in Tlaxcala for $6.00 / volume. There are advantages to living in Mexico.
The Little Toller list looks really good.
The problem is that there are so many books on my “to buy” lists, and I am now on a fixed retirement income. But I generally manage to buy 12-18 books per month, have them shipped first to my mail receiving service in the US, which then reboxes them once a month and FedExes them to me here. It took me a while to work out this system!
I would buy the Suttons in rough condition at the lowest possible prices and have them prettily rebound here in Tlaxcala for $6.00 / volume. There are advantages to living in Mexico.
The Little Toller list looks really good.
The problem is that there are so many books on my “to buy” lists, and I am now on a fixed retirement income. But I generally manage to buy 12-18 books per month, have them shipped first to my mail receiving service in the US, which then reboxes them once a month and FedExes them to me here. It took me a while to work out this system!
9PatrickMurtha
Robert S. Kane’s forthright and penetrating travel guides, of which Africa A to Z in 1961 was the first, were my entrée to the nations of the world, and like John Gunther’s Inside… series, still make excellent reading today. Kane was a trend-setter as a travel writer because he was not afraid to speak his mind; he’ll tell you if there are rats in that hotel.
And he was 100% pro-Africa and pro-independence, which was in itself a political stance at that time. Notice the year, 1961. About 25 African counties became independent between 1960 and 1962, so this volume could scarcely help being a fascinating snapshot of the continent at a key moment in its history. Kane is a very sympathetic, uncondescending observer.
Even the preliminary “get ready for travel” chapters are compelling. I was fascinated to learn that there were at least a dozen major organizations devoted to promoting friendship / cooperation / understanding between the US and Africa. I hope we’re doing as well today, but I wonder.
And he was 100% pro-Africa and pro-independence, which was in itself a political stance at that time. Notice the year, 1961. About 25 African counties became independent between 1960 and 1962, so this volume could scarcely help being a fascinating snapshot of the continent at a key moment in its history. Kane is a very sympathetic, uncondescending observer.
Even the preliminary “get ready for travel” chapters are compelling. I was fascinated to learn that there were at least a dozen major organizations devoted to promoting friendship / cooperation / understanding between the US and Africa. I hope we’re doing as well today, but I wonder.
10PatrickMurtha
The travel writer Peter Biddlecombe is one of the few writers who can genuinely make me laugh out loud and do spit-takes. His travel books are very valuably from the perspective of a businessman and NOT a tourist or travel professional. His narration is dry and the incidents he relates frequently beggar the imagination.
Biddlecombe writes about Africa a lot; is he ever culturally insensitive? I’m not African so in that sense it is not for me to say, but it does not seem to me that he is insensitive very often, in fact he has plenty of sympathy wherever he goes, and is very attuned to the “human comedy”. Bureaucracy drives him crazy, but of whom is that not true?
Of course all writers of European heritage are going to demonstrate insensitivities or misapprehensions OCCASIONALLY when they venture outside their native sphere, but unless they are vicious about it, I am not put off. None of us is perfect.
Biddlecombe writes about Africa a lot; is he ever culturally insensitive? I’m not African so in that sense it is not for me to say, but it does not seem to me that he is insensitive very often, in fact he has plenty of sympathy wherever he goes, and is very attuned to the “human comedy”. Bureaucracy drives him crazy, but of whom is that not true?
Of course all writers of European heritage are going to demonstrate insensitivities or misapprehensions OCCASIONALLY when they venture outside their native sphere, but unless they are vicious about it, I am not put off. None of us is perfect.
