the text of this lovely book tells me that the artist was Brian Cook Batsford, who was the illustrator/designer of the covers of the highly collectible Batsford books. He was an artist who went to work for his uncle Harry Batsford’s firm, which produced a gorgeous series of books about rural life in Britain – with names like English Village Homes, The Beauty of Britain, The Legacy of England; How to See the Country and How to Look at Old Buildings.They featured villages, churches, castles, gardens and country roads, and some of these artworks, I now know. also graced the covers of H.V. Morton’s books as well, including In Search of England. (Some of my HVMs have their dustjackets, but alas, not this one!)
What made Brian Cook Batsford’s style instantly recognisable was his carefully drawn images and large areas of flat, bright colour and his bold use of clashing colours. He had an innovative technique too:
Brian pioneered the use of the Jean Berté watercolour printing process, in which plates were cut in soft rubber and printed with water-based inks, rather than oil. A separate plate was used for each colour, which accounts for the blocks of colour in Brian’s work. Brian had little regard for the finished product and threw away the covers of ‘wrappers’ as he called them, placing books on his shelves in their cloth bindings. Fortunately, the production manager at Batsford, Frances Lucarotti, kept every jacket safe in an album. (p.11)
The books were
a snapshot of British country life, chronicling the world of work – haymaking and ploughing, fishermen at their nets – as well as the villages clustered around the church or village green, and the rolling and verdant landscape that surrounded them.
Though most of the images in Hidden Villages of Britain are contemporary photographs, the book is in part an homage to the artist and there are plenty of his artworks to fall in love with. The book begins with an introduction about villages in general, and then there is a brief bio of the artist’s life, and then it launches into pictorials about eleven regions...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/08/27/hidden-villages-of-britain-by-clare-gogerty-... ( )