Book Listening: I have been listening to 'On Gallows Down by Nicola Chester. subtitled 'Place, Protest and Belonging'. One of the books that was in Sue of Suffolk's Nature reading list.
The first part deals with Greenham Common - Peace Camp (1980) and Newbury Bypass, (l996) both places of protest in the 20th century. Both Wikis give good accounts of what was happening at the time.
But Nicola Chester is really writing about belonging and home. She is an avid nature walker, often when she had young family, strapping the baby to her body, or taking her out in the pram on long walks round the area. She had been born near to Greenham Common but her father, who was a fire fighter, moved around quite a bit in the district. She married a countryman who worked on the big estates round the area, and this gave her free run of the countryside. As you can see she lived in different homes, tenant cottages mostly, so belonging did not necessarily mean to the houses it was the land that called her.
She is a fine writer, passionate about her world but with that once removed countrywoman's attitude as she collects dead animals to be buried and then retrieved for their bones and skull, which so delight her young son.
Still haven't finished the book, Robert Macfarlane rates it as 'passionate, political and personal'. Definitely a female perspective is my understanding of the book, just wondering if Macfarlane is not being a bit too condescending in his rating .....
And for those who like videos - The Wild Horses of Newbury. They came from nowhere and challenged the security men and the police on horses. One of those magical happenings I think. I have always been interested in protest movements. The naive innocence of the protesters up against the brute force of security men and the police. And the ending words - What has become of you England - could well be echoing down the years till today, as we watch the fiasco of Boris Johnson trying to be a president? As if!!
Such beautiful trees in their prime - hated seeing them felled. Those horses did too, by the look of things - though probably just being nosy, truth be told.
ReplyDeleteCan't find who owned the horses but the road cut through a couple of hundred acres so they could have come from anywhere Jennie. The cutting of the old trees was sad and the impassive faces of the security men tells another story.
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