Bøger af John Owen Smith

Walk in the footsteps of Sir Robert Hunter, co-founder of The National Trust, over Hindhead Common and around Waggoners Wells. Plus a short history of The National Trust's acquisitions at the west of The Weald

Flora Thompson has become known almost exclusively as the author of 'Lark Rise to Candleford'. These nature notes, written in the 1920s while she lived in Liphook, Hampshire, predate that work by more than a decade and show many of the characteristics which were to emerge later in her more famous work.

When Canadian troops arrived in Great Britain during the Second World War, they were given quarters in old, cold, damp barracks buildings in the military town of Aldershot. For these young men thousands of miles from home, and in many cases away from their families for the first time, it was a depressing experience.Imagine their joy then, when they found their next station in England was not another military camp, but a charming rural village with pubs, girls, dances - and a welcome for them from the local population.All Tanked Up is the story of their benign 'invasion' of a Hampshire village over a period of four years, told from the point of view of both Villagers and Canadians.For those to whom 'Peace in our Time' came too late.

In 'Lark Rise To Candleford' and 'Heatherley' Flora Thompson wrote the story of her Victorian country childhood and her youth in village post offices. She was sixty when she wrote her well-known books but she had spent a lifetime serving her apprenticeship as a naturalist and a writer. This biography tells the story of her life and her struggles as a writer. Flora Thompson's books opened windows on to the lost world of the hamlet, the village and small country towns.

This is the first in a series of publications through which we intend to illustrate the history of the parish of Headley from different perspectives. In this book, we show some of the buildings, locations and features which have defined the character of the parish up to the middle of the twentieth century. In this book you are taken on a tour of the parish by means of three journeys -the first around the centre of Headley and Arford, the second to Headley Down and beyond, and the third along the River Wey and its tributaries. In doing so, we venture occasionally outside today's civil parish boundaries-but that too is all part of the history of Headley. Further information on the history of Headley may be found on the Internet at website www.headley-village.com/history/

The author has turned detective. In this book, he discovers the true identities behind the pseudonyms which Flora Thompson employed within her writing to hide the identity of the people and places she encountered 'beyond Candleford Green.'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw were two among many eminent people who were regular customers in her post office at Grayshott-unaware that the shy young lady sending their telegrams would one day rank alongside themselves on literary shelves.But the lesser-known characters also lend their own interest to the story. Who was 'Mr Foreshaw, ' the retired big-game hunter with whom she had tea on Sunday afternoons? And 'Richard Brownlow, ' the young man who met her often, then told her he 'could never marry her'? And 'Bob Pikesley' who taught her how to keep dry in a rainstorm? And the bright-eyed 'Alma Stedman' who kept Flora from 'brooding'?And who was the unfortunate 'Mr Hertford, ' her employer at Grayshott, who eventually stabbed his wife to death shortly after Flora left the village?These and other riddles are answered. There is also a 'lost' chapter of Flora's own work published here for the first time, and the opportunity to follow literally in Flora's footsteps by taking the suggested 'trails' through the Hampshire countryside she came to love so well.

These two plays, written by a local historian, tell the story of the Lark Rise to Candleford author in the days before she became famous. In Flora's Heatherley we see her in Grayshott (her Heatherley) at the age of 21 taking the position of sub-postoffice assistant, and staying for two and a half years. She arrived as a young, gauche, country girl, and passed "from foolish youth to wicked adolescence" in the village. She drew disapproval by associating with 'strange' men, and walking for miles alone on the surrounding heaths, and felt more at home having tea with a retired 'big-game' hunter, or learning about local wildlife from a cowman on the common, than walking decorously up and down the village street with the other village girls. The theme of this play is essentially about the conventions of the period, particularly with respect to courtship and marriage, and Flora's difficulty in conforming to them. In Flora's Peverel we see her as a married lady with a husband and children of her own, hoping, against the odds, to "win the fight to write." The Thompsons stayed in Liphook (her Peverel) for twelve years, during which time their third child was born and Flora started to write more seriously than she had before. As a wife and mother she is still battling against the conventions of the day, and her husband's implied criticism of her aspirations to be regarded as an author.