Alex by Tessa Duder

 

Having watched a lot of swimming during the Commonwealth Games and European Aquatics Championships, I decided to look for a “Girls’ Own”-type book on the subject, and people kindly recommended this one, written in the 1980s but set in the 1950s, by New Zealand Empire and Commonwealth Games silver medallist Tessa Duder.  Fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Alex wants to make the New Zealand swimming squad for the 1960 Olympics, but there’s only room for either her or her rival Maggie Benton, and Maggie seems to have the advantage.

Unlike a lot of fictional characters, who are entirely devoted to music, ballet, ice-skating or whatever it may be, and have to be persuaded to do other things too, Alex wants to be in the school play, be in the school hockey team, do ballet, pass her piano exams, do well in her School Certificate and also spend time with her boyfriend Andy.

Like a lot of fictional characters, she suffers an accident (in a hockey match) which upsets her training, but it isn’t really a big deal: she just gets on with things.  And we don’t even see that much of her actually in the pool.  So it’s quite an unusual book.  And very 1980s – first person, lots of internal monologue and short half-sentences, and a lot of angst and anxiety.  Alex isn’t super-confident like so many heroines of books are, and spends a lot of time worrying about all aspects of her life and about what other people think of her.

Also, this is national news.  This isn’t just a tale of someone at a school: there’s continuous press coverage of the rivalry between the two girls, who actually get on OK.

Then something truly horrific happens, but Alex vows that it’ll drive her on … but, instead of a big showdown at the end, we’re just told that both Alex and Maggie will be going to the Olympics.   That ending was inevitable, but it’s strange that it just happens like that, rather than with a dramatic account of a very close race.

It’s very 1980s, as I’ve said.  Had it been written in the 1950s or the 1920s, there’d have been a big showdown at the end.   And Alex would probably have been devoted to swimming at the expense of everything else, or maybe had to choose between swimming and one other thing.   Quite unusual.  But I did really enjoy it.  Thank you so much to the people who recommended it!

 

 

 

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Wonderland – Sky Arts

This series is an interesting look at the “Golden Age” of British children’s literature.  That’s obviously an extremely subjective topic, but the twelve authors specifically mentioned were J M Barrie, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Erskine Childers (the only one with whose books I’m not really familiar), Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, A A Milne, E Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome, Noel Streatfeild and J R R Tolkien.  The idea was to cover the 71-year-period from the publication of Alice in Wonderland  in 1866 to the publication of Lord of the Rings in 1937.  You can argue at length about who should and shouldn’t have been included: a four-part series can only cover so many authors.   And they’d chosen quite a range of authors, meaning that most of what was said only applied to some of them: you can’t really compare Ballet Shoes with The Hobbit, or Toad of Toad Hall with Swallows and Amazons.  But a lot of thought-provoking comments were made.

The starting point was chosen as being when children’s books moved from moralising to entertainment; and they had to choose an end point somewhere … even though it meant excluding both Enid Blyton and C S Lewis.  The fact that the authors were all so different inevitably made the programme rather bitty – Ransome’s dealings with Lenin and Trotsky one minute, AA Milne’s differences with his son Christopher Robin the next – but I don’t know how else they could have done it.  Carroll, Ransome and Milne were discussed at some length in the first episode: presumably it’ll be three authors apiece in the three remaining episodes.

For a few awful moments, I thought that the whole thing was going to consist of the woke brigade slagging off all the old favourites, BBC 2-style – but one of the speakers made a point about how annoying it is when people do that, and how it’d be better to discuss any class or racial issues which people may find in the books, without just slagging the books off and saying that kids shouldn’t read them.  Hooray for a bit of common sense!   Another point made was that there are now abridged versions of classic books available for younger children, and how those tend to miss out the “nasty” bits – because all these books have difficult bits, and don’t just set out to create idylls for children to enjoy.

It was suggested that some authors saw childhood as a “protected area”, but others thought that children deserved more respect than they often got.  And a lot of comments were made about how many of the featured authors had suffered tragedies in their own lives, often involving children or their own childhoods- was that why they chose to write children’s books?

A good point was that rural locations are, in most cases, preferred to urban locations – Streatfeild’s books being an obvious exception.   It’s sometimes suggested that that was part of the mentality brought about by trying to recover from the Great War, but even the books written pre-1914 tend to be set in rural areas.  Are the books meant to be a safe space, and is that connection with rural settings?   Or are they meant to be challenging?  Well, probably a bit of both.  Beatrix Potter’s books, with their sweet little illustrations, can be very scary!

There was certainly quite a lot to think about.  My preferred childhood books were the “Girls’ Own” books of the mid-20th century, but I read most of the children’s classics as well, and I like hearing them being the subject of in-depth and serious discussion.   I know that some people don’t like detailed analysis of childhood favourites: each to their own, but I do like to talk about them, and I like to think that the authors would be very flattered to know that their books are still were being discussed so many years after they were published.   Thank you to Sky Arts for this: we get a lot of adaptations of children’s books, but not that much talk about them.  Well, there’s plenty of talk about them in our lovely fora and Facebook groups, but it was nice to have some on TV for a change!

ETA – I’ve gone bang off this since the second episode said that Frances Hodgson Burnett grew up in Leeds. She grew up in Manchester! How on earth did they get that wrong?

 

 

 

Mill Green school stories by Alison Prince

  I read these in the 1980s, when they were first published, and suddenly felt a random yearning to read them again.  They’re written by Alison Prince, who was a scriptwriter for Trumpton.   Brief pause to recite the names of the Trumpton firemen.  OK, back to the point.  The early books were advertised as being similar to Grange Hill; and I think Armada’s reasoning was that, because of the success of Grange Hill on TV, young readers wanted school stories set at co-ed, comprehensive day schools, rather than the traditional school stories set at single sex private boarding schools.  They never quite caught on, though, which was a shame because they really weren’t bad at all.

Mill Green is a fairly new and probably fairly small (it only seems to have one form per year, although, confusingly, one book suggests that there are 800 pupils!) school in an unspecified part of the UK – I think it’s Northern England, but it doesn’t say and they aren’t many clues.  The school itself is in the middle of nowhere, with pupils travelling in by bus from nearby towns and buses.  The bus trips are a big part of the day, which was very much the case at my school but which you obviously don’t get in boarding school novels.  They focus on a group of first years, who later go into the second year, with older kids only really featuring as bullies picking on the younger kids.   A small number of teachers also feature, notably Mr Potter, our gang’s form master; and parents feature in minor roles.

The books wouldn’t win any awards for the quality of writing: the  word “said” appears umpteen times on every page.  However, the main characters are appealing, and the stories, whilst only short, make for entertaining reading.  They aren’t particularly moralising, as traditional school stories are, nor hard-hitting as some of Grange Hill’s are, but they’re strong enough to keep the reader’s attention.  Each book involves a school project/extra-curricular activity, plus a bit of a mystery.  There’s a slight feeling of the Five Find Outers about solving the crimes and mysteries.  In the first book, the school’s trying to promote gardening/farming in the grounds, and there’s an arsonist on the loose.  In the second book, the school’s putting on a pantomime, and there’s a new girl who clearly isn’t what she claims to be.  And so on.

There are only five books in total.   I enjoyed them in the 1980s and I enjoyed reading them again.   But, whilst American books set in “ordinary” schools – Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, etc – seem to go down well, these just didn’t catch on in the way that boarding school books did, and it wasn’t because of a lack of marketing by Armada.   Maybe kids in the UK just prefer reading traditional school stories.

There are five in all:

Mill Green on Fire
Mill Green on Stage
A Spy at Mill Green
Hands off Mill Green!
Rock on, Mill Green

They’re very 1980s, with a lot of the emphasis being on the technology of the time.  I don’t know what kids of the 2020s would make of that!   But they’re really not bad, as I’ve said, and it’s a shame that they never became more popular.  I’ve enjoyed revisiting them..

 

How To Be True by Daisy May Johnson

This, written by Daisy May Johnson, is a sequel/companion novel to How To Be Brave.  The main character is Edie Berger, the French girl who featured in the previous books as one of Calla North’s best friends.  It’s written in the same quirky way, with a lot of footnotes and a lot of comments from the narrator, but most of it’s set not at the school but during a school trip to France –  in which the girls become involved in trying to catch an art thief, and, in doing so, hear about Edie’s grandmother’s wartime history.

This involves a German family called Mercier.  That’s a very French-sounding name for a German family, but I did wonder if there was a tribute being paid to Odette Mercier of the Chalet School books, as the grandmother’s first name is Odette.  Maybe I’m overthinking things!    The Chalet School, Malory Towers and several other Girls’ Own books are referenced, though.  And how’s this for a 21st century twist on things? – rather than being abroad on colonial or missionary service, or, as Trebizon updated things for the late 20th century, having been posted to Saudi Arabia, Edie’s parents are absent because they’re “activists” and are off protesting.

The style of Daisy May Johnson’s books is very much her own, and her books, unlike traditional girls’ boarding school stories, don’t take themselves seriously in the slightest, but they carry the traditional Girls’ Own messages of friendship, teamwork, and good winning out over bad.  And it’s wonderful that people are still writing boarding school books for children.  In my day, in the 1980s, teachers didn’t really approve of our reading school stories, and it was held that boarding school books were too “elitist”.   Kids were supposed to want stories about comprehensives, like TV’s Grange Hill.   Alison Prince wrote a series called Mill Green, set at a school rather like Grange Hill: the books weren’t bad, but they never really caught on in the way that Malory Towers, St Clare’s, the Chalet School etc had done.   Now there seems to have been a swing back towards boarding school stories.  I think J K Rowling can take a lot of the credit for that, but it’s good to see other authors getting in on it too.

This is currently on a Kindle special offer, so, if you fancy reading it, it’s a good time!   Thank you to Daisy May, and long live boarding school stories!

When The World Was Ours by Liz Kessler

This is a truly wonderful Holocaust book for children.   It starts with three 9-year-old best friends in Vienna, in 1936, having a perfect day (including Sachertorte) together; and follows their lives until two of them die in their mid-teens and the survivor is interviewed in the present day.  Two are Jewish, one isn’t.   It moves between the three, as their once conjoined lives diverge.   One is able to escape to Britain, with the help of a kind British couple whom they’d met briefly at the Prater, and they and their family make a new and happy life for themselves.   One is sent to a ghetto, to Terezin, and then to Auschwitz.  The third is the son of a man who becomes an SS officer at Dachau and later at Auschwitz: the child is drawn into the Hitler Youth movement and becomes a Nazi himself.  It’s rare to find a book which addresses all three of those eventualities – escaping to a safe country, being sent to a death camp, and someone who was once a kind and decent person being drawn into the Nazi web.

It’s slightly confusing in that one character’s chapters are told in the first person present, one in the first person past and one in the third person past, but I suppose that that’s to differentiate between the three different stories.

Liz Kessler’s own father and grandparents were able to escape Nazi Germany, thanks to a British couple whom they’d met by chance, and settle in Southport.   That’s partly why she wanted to tell this story; and I’m glad that the book covers the subject of refugees coming to Britain, as well as the tragic fate of so many who were unable to leave Nazi Germany and the countries which it occupied.   There are a myriad of books about people leaving various parts of the Continent for Britain, the USA, Australia or elsewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but strangely few about those who were able to escape the Nazis.

Apart from the Judith Kerr trilogy, and to some extent The Chalet School in Exile, there never seemed to be any books about this when I was a kid.  Obviously there’s The Diary of Anne Frank, but that doesn’t deal with refugees coming to Britain. Maisie Mosco’s Scattered Seed *does*, but that isn’t aimed at children.

And no-one ever even told me that the Manchester area had had two hostels, funded by local people, for those who’d come here as refugees from the Nazis, one in Broughton Park and one in Withington, both suburbs which I know well.   Nor did anyone ever tell me that my secondary school, along with several other schools in the area, had made a number of places available for free for refugee children – one of whom, now an elderly lady, was recently interviewed on the school’s social media pages.  I’m so proud that the school did that, but why did no-one tell the pupils of the 1980s and 1990s about it?

And I know people whose parents or grandparents came here on the Kindertransport, but, again, it just wasn’t talked about when I was a kid.

Maybe we were still at the stage where it was too painful to talk about either the war or the Holocaust: maybe it was too soon.   There seems to be a new concentration camp novel for adults out every week these days, and if anything it’s got to the stage of overkill; but it’s important that books like this one are available for children.  They weren’t, in my day.

I think that the book’s meant for children aged about 11-13, but it reads to me more like a book for children aged 8-10.   As with any book for younger children on a sensitive topic, there’s the issue of how to show dangerous views without the children accepting them.   This is a problem which comes up a lot in terms of children’s books: the characters have to express these views, but a child reading a book without the guidance of a parent or teacher has to understand that the views are categorically wrong.  I think that this book does a good job of making that clear, but it’s always a grey area.

There’s a lot of information to process, about restrictions on the lives of Jews, about life in the ghetto, about the Kindertransport, about the struggles to obtain an exit visa, about life and death in the camps, and also about the fact that Roma and other groups were also murdered.   But there’s isn’t an information overload, and I don’t think that it’d be too much for children to take in.

This is currently available on a 99p Kindle offer, and I highly recommend it.

 

 

The Woods of Windri by Violet Needham

 

I’m not usually that keen on Ruritanian novels, but I loved this one!   Windri, which unusually for a Ruritanian country hasn’t got a name ending in “ia”, is a small state in the marches of an unnamed empire.  The woods suggest somewhere in northern or central Germany, but being on the marches of the Holy Roman Empire would suggest somewhere further south, especially as the neighbouring state of Monte Lucio sounds like it’s in Italy … er, and probably central Italy, as it’s got olive groves … and then the other neighbouring state, Maupuis, sounds French.  Oh well, never mind.  It’s somewhere!   And some time: the book was published in the early 1950s, the language used sounds Georgian, and I think it’s actually meant to be set in the Middle Ages, judging from the clothes and the lack of any transport other than horses.

It’s aimed at primary school children, but the story’s actually quite complex.  The Lord of Windri’s got two daughters, and the elder daughter, Phillippa, has been betrothed to the Count of Monte Lucio.  She isn’t very happy, because she’s fallen in love with the mysterious, handsome, gallant and charming Knight of the Golden Feather, whom she and her sister Magdalen met whilst walking through the woods.  Of course, it turns out that the said knight is none other than the Count of Monte Lucio.  Hurrah!

However, there’s also quite a convoluted storyline involving a young boy called Theo, who’s run away from the wicked Abbot of Windri.  It transpires that the lord of Maupuis was dispossessed by a relative, and that he and his infant son were both presumed dead, but that rumour has it that they are both actually alive, and that the child was sent to live at a monastery.   I’m sure you can work out for yourselves whom Theo turns out to be.

But there’s a lot of evil plotting afoot, with Theo, his father (now living as a hermit) and the Count of Monte Lucio all in danger.  Of course, it all turns out all right in the end, and we’re told that Theo and Magdalen will eventually marry.  It’s a bit annoying that Theo gets to have all the adventures, whilst Magdalen’s only slightly involved: people used to Enid Blyton books, in which the girls are generally in on it all, might well find that rather frustrating.   But, in general, I did thoroughly enjoy it.

A Pony To Jump by Patricia Leitch

  I read all Patricia Leitch’s Jinny/Shantih books in the 1980s, but I’d outgrown them by the time that the Kestrels series, of which this is the second, came out.   This is along similar lines -pony book, lower middle class families rather than the upper class/upper middle class families usually found in pony books, slight touch of mysticism.

The two main characters actually rather annoyed me.  One of them had a badly behaved dog which caused havoc everywhere.  Think Bruno Maynard in the Chalet School books.  There are few things which I dislike more than badly behaved dogs.  The other one called her grandmother “Narg” because it was “Gran” spelt backwards.  Why??!  Why not just call her “Gran”?

However, as a short pony book for a child of primary school age, it’s quite entertaining – there’s a bit about learning to jump, as the title suggests, and some drama with feuds at the riding school, a charity pageant, a famous showjumper turning up and a horse being stolen.   I won’t be bothering with the rest of the series, but, if I’d read this when I was 8 or 9, I’m sure I would have done.

 

The School in the Woods by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

This is the second book in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s “Toby” trilogy, coming in between The School on the Moor  and Toby at Tibbs Cross.  It’s a school-story-cum-spy-story published in 1940, one of several books in this genre published during the two world wars, but this one’s a bit different in that it’s set before the outbreak of the Second World War, in what I suppose is an alternative universe in which Dick Trevor (Toby Barrett’s future husband, although we don’t know that in this book) and his father develop a gas which could potentially be used to destroy entire armies, which they hope will act as a deterrent and prevent the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany, and any future wars.

The spy element comes in the form of traitors who are plotting to steal the formula, and this involves a mysterious girl at Toby’s new school.   Of course, all’s well that end’s well … but the reader, unlike the characters, knows very well that it isn’t, because this gas didn’t exist, and war is going to come.  And, in 1940, they don’t know what the outcome of that war will be.  In the next book, there isn’t actually any mention of this gas – war has come, Toby is working as a land girl, and Dick is involved in other war work.  So I’m not entirely sure where DFB was going with this book, unless maybe she wrote it before war broke out and it was wishful thinking.

There’s a lot of talk in this wartime book about the importance of the Empire and the idea of the Pax Britannica.   The “goodie” characters, and presumably DFB herself, all believe that, if this gas were in the hands of Britain/the British Empire alone, it would do nothing but good – it would bring about world peace by deterring “baddie” countries, which we presumably understand to mean Nazi Germany, from being aggressive.   Everyone firmly seems to believe that, as things stand (i.e. without the gas), war is inevitable – which seems a bit odd, given how many people genuinely bought the “peace for our time” idea.

People have all these ideas about what can bring about world peace.  One superpower.  Two rival blocs, based on ideology or, in the past, religion.  Nation states.  A federal Europe (I am adamantly opposed to this idea, but I do understand that some people genuinely think that it’s a good one).  A balance of power involving a number of different states.  And not one of them flaming well seem to work.  I suppose that DFB’s idea of some sort of very powerful fatal gas foreshadows the development of nuclear weapons, but even they don’t seem to be keeping the peace any more, because everyone seems to assume that the other side wouldn’t use them.   Maybe this fictional gas would have been better, because it wouldn’t have been as destructive or threatened civilians, so there might not have been the assumption that it wouldn’t be used.  But anyway.  It’s only a story.

In terms of the actual school element, not much happens.  Toby’s old school has been merged with another school, there are the usual issues in which the two groups of girls find it hard to combine, there’s a “them and us” feeling, and there’s a rather pointless subplot about a younger girl who keeps having hysterics. There’s also a local woman with whom Toby becomes friendly, and who eventually agrees to act as guardian to the aforementioned mysterious girl, who’s an innocent party in her elder siblings’ dastardly doings.   The main point of the book is the storyline about the gas.  And I really would love to know whether the book was actually written before or after war broke out.

 

The Player’s Boy and The Players and the Rebels by Antonia Forest

 

These two books, set in the final decade of Elizabeth I’s reign, feature Nicholas Marlow, an ancestor of the Marlow family of the Kingscote books, as a young man running away from home and joining a group of theatrical players.  The final chapter shows him going away to sea, which if I recall correctly is mentioned in one of the Kingscote books, but the rest of the story shows him as one of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – a friend of William Shakespeare, an acquaintance of Walter Raleigh, and an associate of the Earls of Essex and Southampton.

This, of course, is the period of Essex’s Rebellion.  I’m afraid that I’ll always associate it primarily with Essex barging in on Elizabeth before she’d put her make up on, but obviously the fact that he did actually plan to seize control of London and force the Queen to dismiss Cecil was rather more serious than that.  Well, probably.  I hate to be seen with no make up on.   There’s so much focus on the events of the late 1580s, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and, of course, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, one of the defining moments in English history, that the period from 1588 to 1603 tends to be rather neglected, so it was an interesting idea to set the books at this time.   And it’s rather convenient that Christopher Marlowe’s surname was very close to that of the Marlows, and that Essex’s steward shared the surname of Merrick with the Marlow’s neighbours.

There genuinely was a link between the theatre and the rebellion, and that’s what we see in these books.  The Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare’s patron, and a performance by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men of Shakespeare’s Richard II, showing an anointed monarch being deposed, did cause a fair amount of controversy.

The GGBP editions of these two books have a number of forewords, one of which was written by the late Joy Wotton.  I was fortunate enough to know Joy via Facebook, and to meet her at the Harrogate Book Fair a few years ago.  She was a lovely person, and it was quite poignant for me to read her words.  Hilary Clare’s foreword points out that Antonia Forest got some of the historical details, notably the relations between different social classes, wrong, but that she got the actual course of events spot on.   What we don’t know is where Shakespeare actually was during the 1590s.  I go with the idea that he was at Hoghton Tower – OK, OK, spot the Lancastrian! – but we don’t know, and he may well have been with a group of players.

I can’t say that these are the greatest historical novels that I’ve ever read, and I doubt if I’d have read them had it not been for the Marlow connection, but they’re not bad at all, especially bearing in mind that they were meant for children/young adults; and, as I’ve said, this period of Elizabeth I’s reign tends to be neglected.   Nicholas came across very well, and the lives of real people and fictional people were interwoven pretty much seamlessly.   They also give a fascinating picture of theatrical life at a crucial time in the development of English theatre.  I rather enjoyed them!

A Free Man on Sunday by Fay Sampson

We all know see that the title of this book comes from “The Manchester Rambler” by Ewan MacColl, right?   “I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday.”  In addition to being a singer-songwriter from Lower Broughton, and the father of the late, great Kirsty MacColl, Ewan MacColl was one of the leaders of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, the 90th anniversary of which will be marked on Sunday, April 24th.  Anyone who’s ever felt trapped in a workplace, especially in a densely-populated urban area, and especially if they’ve ever suffered from mental health problems, will be able to identify with that feeling … and that’s partly why a group of mainly working-class people from Manchester and Sheffield, largely organised by Benny Rothman from Cheetham Hill (let me get the North Manchester bit in there!) campaigned so hard for walkers in England and Wales to be given access to the countryside.  As they put it, it was a “working class struggle for the right to roam versus the rights of the wealthy to have exclusive use of moorlands for grouse shooting”.

Opinions on the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass vary.  Some people think that it was a big turning point as regards public access to the countryside, and was what led to the creation of the Countryside Code and the National Parks.  Some people think that it wasn’t a big deal.  A lot of people admire the Trespassers, but some people from landowning backgrounds point out that trespassing is inappropriate – five of the trespassers were jailed for public order offences – and say that mass trespasses hindered the movement towards greater access.  I’m from North Manchester, OK.  My paternal grandfather was the same age as Benny Rothman and grew up in the same part of town as he did.  Maybe they even knew each other. In fact they may well have gone to the same primary school, maybe been in the same class.  I love North Manchester, but it’s a very built-up, densely populated area, and it’s extremely important for me to be able to get out into the countryside for some “green therapy”.  So I was always going to identify with the Trespassers:  I’m not going to pretend to be unbiased about any of this!

During lockdown, there were a lot of pictures in the papers of crowded public parks in Manchester and other cities, and tut-tutting about the number of people there.  Well, that was because we weren’t allowed out of our local areas and, wonderful as our parks are, there are a lot of us living near them.  For the number of people, we don’t have a lot of green space.  And we need it, especially during tough times – and 1932, in the middle of the Depression, was a very tough time, just as lockdown was.  We need access to the countryside.  Thank you again to all those who helped to win it for us.

And I was hoping to be able to say that I loved this book.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good.  But it tried.

It’s a children’s book.  It says that it’s aimed at children aged between 10 and 13.  Our heroine is Edie Ramsden, who lives in a fictional town called “Oldway”.  I tried to work out where it was meant to be, but I couldn’t.  The surnames are all very Lancastrian, and yet there’s a mention of someone having worked at the Yorkshire Evening Post, and there’s also reference to the best-known climbers in Derbyshire and being on the other side of “the county”, so maybe the author was trying to show that this was a joint effort.  Or maybe the author, who comes from Devon, doesn’t actually know that much about Northern England, and I’m totally overthinking things!  TBH, that’s probably accurate.  Everyone works in a cotton mill and goes to chapel.  I was just waiting for the cloth caps and whippets.  Oh, and apparently they can see both Kinder Scout and the Mersey from Oldway, which is, er, interesting.  It really does read like a book written by a Southerner!   But never mind.

Edie’s dad is very involved with rambling, but they are a chapel-going family, and her mum and their friends are rather shocked by the idea both of rambling on a Sunday and of the involvement of the Young Communists in the rambling/trespassing movement.  That’s obviously a perfectly valid viewpoint, but I found it a bit odd.  The whole point of being “A Free Man on Sunday” (and the author does acknowledge that the song hadn’t actually been written at the time of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass) is that you can do what you want on a Sunday.  Sabbatarianism doesn’t really mesh with that, other than not actually doing your job of work.  A lot of the people involved were communists, and or Jewish, and the others presumably weren’t bothered about either attending Sunday morning services or strict Sunday observance in general, or they wouldn’t have been going on long Sunday rambles.  I’m not quite sure why the author chose to bring Methodist sabbatarianism into it.  I’m not criticising it, I just don’t really think it fits with the main plotline, i.e. the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass.

OK, enough moaning.  On the positive side, the book makes a big effort to emphasise how important access to the land is to working-class people.  And it points out that a lot of the ramblers were women: it wasn’t just a male thing.  It also makes the point – and this is something which came up a lot in 2020 and 2021, with so many people “staycationing” – that visitors to the countryside need to respect it.  It doesn’t belong to anyone: it belongs to everyone.  No swinging on gates and possibly breaking them.  And, although the book didn’t mention either of these issues, no dropping litter and no letting horrible dogs attack sheep.  But it also shows that the Trespassers were treated very harshly by gamekeepers.

Edie’s dad goes off to join the Trespass.  Edie decides to follow him.  She has a problem with the wheel of her bike.  Two men stop to help her – and they’re none other than Benny Rothman and his mate Wolfie Winnick.  They all reach the top of Kinder Scout … and Edie’s dad is one of those arrested.  The book ends with him being one of those jailed for public order offences, and Edie dreaming of the day that he’s free again and they’re all free to climb Kinder Scout.

It wasn’t the greatest of books, as I’ve said, but very few books do address this important event in the history of the British countryside, so I’m grateful to Fay Sampson for doing so.   Thank you to her, but, most of all, thank you again to all of those who fought for the right of the public in England and Wales to enjoy the countryside.   It’s a very important right, and may it never be taken away.