4 out of 5 stars

Farming is hard and relentless work even with modern machinery and techniques, to do it takes a certain amount of tenacity and a lot of sheer bloody-mindedness. It is part of the reason why a lot of people are choosing not to follow it as a career, even those that would be considered farming stock.

There are some though that cannot ignore that desire to work on the land. Patrick Laurie is one of those people. They pour their money into a small farm in his native Galloway, but rather than acquire modern breeds and the latest expensive equipment, he decides that he would rather get an older tractor and most importantly buy the Riggit Galloway cow, a hardy traditional breed, that is perfectly suited to this landscape.

He is one of the rare people wanting to move back onto the land; most deserted it years ago. The inevitable square plantations of commercial forest have sprung up, the centuries of tradition and sensitive land management have gone and the wildlife has suffered, in particular the curlew. These new Riggit Galloway’s need a completely different method of care compared to modern stock, and as Laurie learns about what they do and don’t need to survive, he discovers that these techniques could bring life back to the landscape.

Taking the land back to the old techniques of rotation and coupled with this and older species of cattle to make the land work as it used to, very quickly bring benefits. He restores an old mower to make hay as they did in the old days rather than take silage off the fields, this longer cropping help the curlews nest. He plants barley and rather than get a combine in to harvest it, it is cut and stooked (what a lovely word) in the old way.

Pain is a different thing under wide and rushing skies. Even in the bleakest moments of solitude, I draw a selfish glow from that kind of darkness. I hoard the prickle of sleet on my face and endure it, telling myself no one else would. I turn away from the warmth of sharing because now I see this place runs far deeper than play or simple sunshine.

It is a brutally honest book, he portrays farming in the cold light of day, the small successes and the brief moments of pleasure are set against the sheer amount of hard work it is just to stand still. It is a dangerous job too, he is not afraid to tell of near misses and the almost callous attitude you must have at times. What is very evident in this though is his deep, deep love of the landscape that he lives in. He is obsessed by curlews, those magical birds that have been disappearing for far to long and are now seriously threatened. I really liked his writing style, he is not nostalgic in any way, though he respects the old ways of working with not against the land. It is a book very much about the place, about Galloway, an often-ignored part of Scotland that has a beauty of its own without the dramatic hills of the highlands. Highly recommended.

2 out of 5 stars

This is a brooding gothic melodrama that is set in that most Victorian of places, the asylum. Nathaniel Kerner is appointed by one run by Dr Algernon Chettle called Crakethorn. It is located between North and West Ridings in Yorkshire and offered clean air, water gardens and healing springs. Chettle is a proponent of the science of phrenology, the study of skulls to try to elicit information about the mind and brain contained within the skull.

He is allocated the newest patient there, Victoria Harleston, who has been sent by her husband from another institute to be cured of her madness. She is a striking young woman, who at first glance doesn’t seem to be suffering in the same way that some of the other patients are. Kerner’s methods are very different from Chettles, but even they have very little effect on her. Stuck for ideas he invites a ‘mesmerist’ to try to cure her, but after he is left wondering if she really is mad, or the revelation that she reveals whilst under his influence is true.

The second part of the book is set in London. Kerner heads there in search of Harleston after she manages to escape Crakethorn. There is strong spiritualist undercurrent in the city with various seances and events taking place. It feels creepy that the first part of the book. In the final part of the book, they are all back at Crakethorn, and it is slowly dawning on Kerner just why Chettle has the asylum in the first place…

I liked the brooding atmospheric backdrop to all the scenes in the book. It feels well researched and authentic too, from the way that she describes the smells from the dogs, the way that different classes interact and the barbaric treatment of the patients in the asylum. The supernatural and spiritualist elements feel like they have been lightly dusted over the plot, they are there to enhance rather than be the central element. It has some really strong female characters too, but I thought it was overly convoluted and complicated and for me was missing that one moment of utter dread that a book of this style demands. Not entirely my book, but I thought it was well written nonetheless.

4 out of 5 stars

The British always find time to talk, and complain, mostly, about the weather it is a natural obsession. I am one of them, I find the way that the weather works around our planet endlessly fascinating. I often stop in when walking to take pictures of the beautiful cloud formations that we often get on the south coast. The weather is one of the most complex systems on our planet and it takes a supercomputer to produce a forecast for the next few days. Good as they are now, the ability for these computers to predict precisely what the weather is going to be in 4 months time in the afternoon is impossible.

I am not alone in this mild obsession, artists, writers and poets have this fascination too. J.R. Carpenter is one and this gem of a book is her response to the storms that battered the south-west in 2014. They caused catastrophic flooding in the Somerset levels and destroyed a railway line in Devon. I remember it well as it felt like it was never going to end.

This is a Picture of Wind is her response to those storms but with a focus on the wind, that movement of airs that you can feel but not see. She has mined her notebooks to find words and phrases that partially describe what is happening as we observe.

Trees grey with age. A pewter sky. Gleams light around the edges

I really liked this book, it is as simple as it is elegant with its prose. By taking the phrases that the weather forecasters use to describe what is going to happen and removing the context of when and where means that you can appreciate the beauty of each of the phrases. There are five sections to the book, The Beaufort Poems, A year at Tottenham, A Year at Sissinghurst, A Year at Sharpham and the Month Arrays. Each part reflects the dynamic ability of the weather to constantly and continually change. If you like list to the Shipping Forecast just for the pleasure of hearing the intonation of the phrases then you will probably love this. As part of the project, this is linked to a website that has live weather data here or follow  on Twitter to see regular updates.

This book is a beautiful tiny object too, and if there was one flaw, I would have liked it to be longer. For those that like watching the wind, this video of real-time wind systems across the planet is mesmerising.

5 out of 5 stars

Wizards are not known for their physical prowess, they would rather forgo exercise or similar activities for seconds and maybe even thirds at the dinner table. But if they want to keep eating, they are going to have to play a football match to ensure that the substantial financial endowment that they have from a local family continues.

They soon come to realise that the game of football played in Ankh-Morpork is pretty dangerous, two mobs swarm after the ball and there are lots of injuries and often deaths too. Worried by this, after all, you can’t eat if you’re dead, they concoct a plan with Lord Vetinari, the city tyrant and ruler, to amend the rules to make it safer for everyone. The wizards begin their training regime.

The new game of football has a lot of appeal to the people of the city and four unlikely people are pulled into the excitement surrounding the game. Mr Nutt has been employed at the Unseen University as a candle dribbler, he has always thought he was a goblin, but it turns out that he isn’t. His colleague and best friend there, Trev Likely, is the son of the Ankh-Morpork’s most famous deceased footballer, but he had promised late mum that he won’t ever play football. Also linked are Glenda and Juliet. Glenda works the night kitchen at the Unseen University and makes the very best pies on the Disc. Juliet is her glamourous assistant who has a bit of a thing for Trev and somehow ends up as a model for the latest micromail fashion.

As the two teams start to practice with the new rules and balls, everyone in the city is captivated with the match, after all, it is not just a game of football.

I am not a football fan, it really doesn’t do anything for me at all, I much prefer other sports such as cricket. Pratchett’s brilliance is taking a subject from our world and showing it a mirror. The reflection is not exactly the same, rather the traits and foibles that add to the richness of human life can all be seen in their stark and humorous shades and he has done that with this subject rather well. There are lots of other themes in here about the way humans work too that you really have to read to understand and empathise with. If there was one flaw, I thought it dragged a bit in the middle. It is not a book to be read in public as outbreaks of guffaws can happen fairly often with his prose. Very highly recommended.

4 out of 5 stars

Esther and Dan have taken the plunge and have moved to a disused railway station in a tiny village just south of Inverness. It is a time of change for both of them, Dan had been made redundant from his job and Esther is currently expecting their first child. They want to turn this into a business by making it into a writing retreat.

The story unfolds in their first week at the place. Their new neighbour Mike seems very friendly and even more amazingly Dan seems to be getting on with him immediately. They are beset with fog for the first few days making it very difficult to get out and about there, so Esther starts to unpack the boxes of possessions that they have bought with them. But there are strange things happening around the house, a cupboard that is jammed shut is suddenly found open and tucked at the back is a carved disc of wood with three interlinked hares. As she holds the carving, it begins to vibrate. Her dreams are very vivid and strange, she is walking through the forest that surrounds their home, but is being followed by a hunter. Each day he gets that little bit closer to her…

Esther and Dan have brought a lot of emotional baggage with them too. Esther lost her foot when she was a small girl in a car accident caused by her father who was driving whilst drunk. Dan is from a very religious family and has a very overbearing and oppressive father who they left behind in Bristol. There is also the element of trust between them, a key part of a relationship. A number of the things that Dan says and does do not add up or make sense when looked at in a rational way. She is starting to feel that things are going to be coming to a head soon with the stress of the move still affecting Esther in particular.

At its heart, this is a domestic thriller that has lies, deception and mistrust running all the way through it. Lewis builds the tension between the two main characters well as each chapter unfolds, recounting the events of that day, as well as having a subtle and unnerving creepiness that underlies it all. It didn’t feel very gothic thankfully, rather the unease is drawn from the folk horror elements that Esther experiences in her dreams and the location. I thought that this was pretty good overall, though occasionally the descriptive prose did feel like it was a little overdone occasionally. For me, the final chapter had almost too much going on and personally I would have liked more of the folk horror elements as they can make this sort of book seriously creepy.

4 out of 5 stars

I am normally late to most things, but by the time that I had noticed the buzz about the Detectorists the final series had ended. Thankfully BBC4 repeated them and recorded them to watch at some point in the future. Not sure how it happened, but I had some spare time one evening and sat down to watch the first episode from the first series and before I knew it I had watched four of them. I had finished watching them all a couple of nights later.

To say I loved it would be an understatement, Makenzie Crook has made something wonderful here about the simple complexities of human relationships and male friendships and intimacies. The plot focuses on two friends who share a passion for metal detecting, it is normally a fairly lonely hobby, but this is for them a shared hobby. This simple but beautiful comedy had great appeal to people from all walks of life.

It also tapped into various themes that many people found appealing, in particular the way people react to their local landscapes. Some just find it a pleasant place to walk, others see the landscape as a timeline of history stretching way back over millennia, that if you know where and how to look at it, the secrets can be found. These themes are picked up in the four sections of this book, Joanne Norcup considers how gender in the series relates to knowledge and expertise, Andrew Harris writes about how we look at the landscape in the search for clues. Isla Forsyth looks at how the memory works when seen in the context of place and objects and Innes M. Keighren writes about how the characters of the comedy interpret their beloved landscape.

The book is a celebration of the mundane, the items that they find are the casts offs and detritus from normal life, but it as much about the love that the two main characters have trying to read the landscape and find that elusive treasure and the boat burial. But as hopeless as these some times amusing objects are, there is still a story behind all of them. It considers just why (mostly) men would want to spend time waving an electronic device over a barren field and asks if they are there to discover the history of the place or to give some escape or breathing space in a relationship. It is also quite rare, as there is no mocking of the characters for doing what they love, rather it is an acknowledgement that people can be generous about people and their hobby.

I really liked this book, it doesn’t feel too academic in its prose either, which is a relief, as it could so easily of done so. By exploring the gentle themes from the series and expands on them, filling in the details of the character and the landscape which they are searching for objects and mostly understanding. If you liked The Detectorists, then you’ll probably like this too.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

It is said that an oak grows for 300 years, lives for another 300 and then takes 300 years to die. Those, of course, are the lucky ones, most live around 150 to 200 years. The oldest oak in my part of the world, Dorset, is the Wyndham’s Oak near Gillingham and is 10m wide. I’ve not seen it yet, one day though. However, I don’t have a tree nearby that I have the same affinity with that James Canton does. but there is some tree in my locale that I take time to walk by and admire as the seasons grind past each year. I love the way that they constantly change through the days as the light transforms the way that they look.

Canton’s tree is called the Honywood Oak and is a magnificent tree. It has a girth of 28 feet and is thought to be around 800 years old. It is one of the last survivors of the 300 or so oaks that were once in the 130-acre park at the Marks Hall Estate. One of the others left has the fantastic name of the Screaming Oak. Just imagine if most of them were still there and hadn’t been cut down. He was to spend two years of his life with this tree.

Getting your head around a tree that can still be alive around at 10 times your life span takes some doing. They are almost timeless; to think at oak speed means slowing ourselves down to the speed that this tree operates at. Appreciating the imperceptible changes that take place to the tree over the year, without contemplating it in the context of minutes and seconds or the latest social media notification, takes a fair amount of self-control, but it was something that Canton managed to do. In fact, it was something that he needed to do as this oak became something of a crutch in supporting him through an emotional time dealing with a breakup.

But there is more to this than his time spent with this particular tree. It is often considered to be our national tree and it had helped shelter us, we have built boats and ships from it and even further back in our history it had a strong spiritual and ritual element especially those that had mistletoe growing in the branches. He speaks to knowledgeable people who know much more about the local woods that he could ever know and takes the time to glean details from them.

Tentatively I close my eyes.
Time passes.
A calm creeps over me as though a blanket has been wrapped around my shoulders.
A numinous peace descends.
When I open them, there is only the oak framed before me, the grey bark ridged and still, so still. I feel bewitched.

An obsession with a particular tree could be seen as being slightly dysfunctional, but in these strange times in 2020 people have been taking the time to walk out in their locality and connect with places, woodlands and people have begun to reconnect with the natural world once again. If I am looking for a particular peace then I know I will find it alongside water and in among trees. I have a particular affinity for the oak too, as my name is derived from the French for oak, le chêne. I really liked this, the writing feels natural and at other times intimate. I liked the diary format that was used in some parts of the book, it didn’t feel overbearing, just fitted right in with the wide topics that he is writing about in his exploration of oaks in our culture and folklore. If you have a thing about trees then this would be one to read.