I am, what you might call, a child of 'shire' England. I was born in Staffordshire - and spent my childhood growing up in Wiltshire (2 years), Lincolnshire (2 years), and finally Buckinghamshire (12 years). The picture of me (opposite) was taken when I was about 6 years old. Strangley enough I still have the (almost constant) expression of bewilderment and apprehension - although the mop of fair hair is no longer a 'mop', and no longer 'fair'.

I am a passionate advocate of 'radical nostalgia' - those who have experienced better times know the truth. The defining tenet of Modernism, that the present is always better than the past, is a pernicious and deceitful proposition.

The ancestral family tradition is that of farm labouring, domestic service, fishing in the North Sea, and of service to the Country.

The following personal 'elegy' is taken from reference [2] - as a tribute to, and a fond reflection on, more civilised times ...

I now see, on reflection, how fortunate I was in my early childhood. I grew up in the heart of England, in an extended community of home, village, parish, town and sublime shire countryside. This was a community at ease with itself, proud and protective of its heritage, full of self-confidence and naturally optimistic for the future. As youngsters we took wonderful things for granted. We had yet to acquire the grown-up wisdom that knows life is not constant – that good times are special and precious; that they should be treasured and nurtured. We lived in a world of unconscious enchantment and openhearted emotion.

Our young lives were infused with a rich cultural heritage of extraordinary variety and profound relevance. At school we would listen, enchanted, as stories of the faerie world were recounted to our eager upturned faces – stories of betrayed innocence, of cruel exile, of selfless valour, of kindness behind ugliness, and of wickedness masked by flattery and deceit. We sang songs with unrestrained gusto of courtship and love, of the land and of the sea, of life and death, and of both the golden age and of times of cruel darkness (‘ring a-ring of roses’). And we danced with joy to the music of pipe, fiddle and drum.

In our school lessons we were shown the actuality of our world; why we had food in our bellies, clothes on our backs and a fire in the grate. We were shown the lives lived in the wider community – of the tough grimy underworld of the coal miners; of the brave trawler-men, their boats and the fish of the cold grey sea; and of the toiling farmer and the crops in the soil and beasts of the field. We were taught to read carefully, write beautifully, and do our sums without mistake. School outings were extended family adventures to redbrick labyrinthine palaces and sun-dappled parks, lazy Thames’ boat trips through Goring to see heron skim and hear the lock keeper’s beery tales. And once, I now recall, we even journeyed to far away Greenwich to marvel at huge telescopes of brass and wood, and gaze up at aged paintings of sail-ships at war. A precious heritage was being passed on for safekeeping.

The reality of nature was all about us. We moved through a landscape of sympathetic cultivation – of carefully pruned orchards, managed woodland, tilled fields and well tended livestock. This was a familiar landscape; we knew the names of the trees, the flowers, and the wildlife of meadow, spinney and brook. The hedgerows and fields were our own secret larder – blossom, berries, fruit, nuts and mushrooms marked out the year. We felt the all-enveloping hush of the night, saw the darkening frost-hardened fields ghost-lit by an infinite sky of stars, and heard the first whisper of snow on icy pane. We were drenched by sudden spring showers, browned by summer sun; stung (much too frequently) by angry bees, and chased by the farmer’s ill-tempered old ram. We saw animals born, animals mate and animals die. We knew the truth of the countryside – in all its bloody directness.

Permeating all of this was the experience of community, embodied by the ‘ordinary’ people, characterised by the custodianship of custom, tradition, and common decency. A network of gossip linked housewife to housewife, to deliveryman (grocer, baker, butcher, milkman, coalman, fishmonger), to the village midwife, the schoolteacher, the farm labourer, the village ‘bobby’, the postmistress and the postman.

A living web of wise-council and common knowledge existed throughout the community, self-adapting to best concentrate local information to the immediate area – few things of local importance would (for long) go unnoticed. A sense of both permanence and steady improvement pervaded; newcomers to the community were rare, but made most welcome (my own family being just such an example, having moved down from far-away Lincolnshire). Change was mostly from the ‘inside’, predicated on local experience and local wishes.

There was an assumption of safety and responsibility in this community. I recall walking home from junior school, often by myself – and why not? We trusted adults, and we lived in a community that expected that trust never to be betrayed. Children were given the time, space and protection to be children, to learn good things and to grow into wise adulthood. They were acknowledged and treasured as the community’s future.

This place, the Vale, the town and the countryside was, for us children especially, a place of natural enchantment. And it is the people of this place that, over very many generations, largely determined the form and function of the town, and of the surrounding countryside.
We grew up without anguished self-doubt, we lived our identity and had no thought of having to explain who we were (who would want to know?). Our Englishness was not elective or even consciously reflected upon – it was our actual being, of our belonging in an ancient realm of Middle England – of community, history, culture and place. We were who we were.

Heart of England

References

[1] Flora Thompson, 'Lark Rise To Candleford', Penguin Books Ltd., London 1996

[2] Tony Shell, ‘A People’s History – The Emergence of English Identity’, Darklake Publications, 2005

[3] Graig Taylor, ‘Return to Akenfield – portrait Of An English Village In The 21st Century’, Granta Books, London, 2006

[4] Robin Page, 'The Decline of an English Village', Bird's Farm Books, UK, 2004

[5] Roger Scruton, 'England - An Elegy', Pimlico, london 2001

[6] Roger Scruton, ‘News From Somewhere – On Settling’, Continuum, London 2004

[7] Gordon Beningfield, ‘Beningfield’s English Villages’, Taj Books, Surrey, 2004

[8] Robert Colls, 'Identity Of England', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002

[9] Patrick Curry, 'Defending Middle Earth - Tolkien: Myth & Modernity', HarperCollins, London, 1998

[10] Jill Hollis and Ian Cameron (Ed.), Gordon Beningfield, ‘Poems of the Countryside’, TAJ Books, Surrey, 2004

[11] Marcus B. Huish, ‘Helen Allingham’s Happy England – A Facsimile’, Taj Books Ltd., 2004

[12] Ina Taylor, ‘Helen Allingham’s England’, Caxton Editions, London 2000

[13] Roy Faiers, 'The Whimsical World of Colin Carr', This England Books, Cheltenham, 2007

Favourite Music:

Sigur Ros, 'Heima' [DVD music video]

Sandy Denny, 'No More Sad Refraines - The Anthology'

Eliza Carthy, 'Anglicana'

Secret Garden, 'Once in a Red Moon' (especially track 4 "Greenwaves", and track 9)

Secret Garden, 'Dream Catcher', (especially track 16 "Hymn to Hope", and tracks 5,9,10 and 11)

Enya, 'A Day Without Rain' (especially track 5 "deora ar mo chroi")

Kate Rusby, 'The Girl Who Couldn't Fly', (especially track 3 "no names")

Kate Ruby and Kathryn Roberts

Stacey Earle, 'Simple Gearle'

Shivaree, 'I Oughtta Give You a Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in This Dump'

The Incredible String Band, 'Changing Horses'

Favourite Films:

Beowulf and Grendel, Sturla Gunnarson 2007

A very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet 2005

The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 2007

Goya's Ghost, Milos Forman 2006

The Fountain, Darren Aronosfky 2007

The Snowman (animation), Raymond Briggs 1982

The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon, presented by Dan Cruickshank, BBC and BFI co-production, 2005

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, directed by Tony Richardson (1962), BFI publication

Whistle Down the Wind, Bryan Forbes 1961

Went The Day Well?, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Ealing Studios (1942)

A Matter of Life and Death, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1965

In Which We Serve, directed by Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942