‘I climbed up to Shaston, in the tracks of Jude and Sue, went on to Sherton Abbas, and met Grace Melbury and Winterborne in Sheep Street: down through the country of the Woodlanders to Casterbridge: on to Budmouth, looking for (but not finding) Overcombe of The Trumpet-Major on the way.’ At which Hardy pointed out: ‘You would have had to turn eastward from the main road.’ His novels are rooted in the earth of his home county and it’s hardly possible to visit south Dorset without seeing it through his eyes.
In his day, R. D. Blackmore was to Devon —where he spent part of his childhood, being educated at Blundell’s, Tiverton— what Hardy was to Dorset, although most of his work has gone out of publication and he is now chiefly remembered for immortalizing Exmoor in Lorna Doone. That novel spawned an entire industry around the Badgworthy Water and Lynton area, where some visitors assume that the lawless Doones are a real family still marauding this wild country and that there really was a shooting in Oare church, where Blackmore’s grandfather was rector. There is a statue of Lorna in Dulverton, gateway to the moor.
Denne historien er fra May 27, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 27, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
