Smoke Across The Fell Find!
Graham Sutton, the author of Smoke Across The Fell, was a notable Cumbrian writer who died in 1959 at the age of 67. He was born in Scotby and educated at St Bees (on the Cumberland coast) and Queen College, Oxford. He was a playwright, broadcaster and lecturer in addition to being a well known novelist who wrote his first books (detective stories) under the pen-name of Anthony Marsden.
But it is with his later novels set in Cumberland and the Lake District about the Fleming family that I feel I have truly found not one but several hidden gems! The characters in these stories were true Cumbrians and in the books the author shows a deep understanding of the rugged life of the North during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Smoke Across The Fell is the second novel in the series and follows the life of Dirck as he struggles to avert imminent disaster caused by his own mistake, by turning to smuggling in order to save his inheritance. The smuggling is not coastal so much as inland and the carrying of "wad" over the fells leads to daring exploits and eventual tragedy for Dirck and his brother Benet. The hard life of the upland sheep farmer, the back breaking labour of salt making and the threat posed to the rural communities by the ever growing influence of the iron industry along the Cumberland coast are wonderfully described. The prescence in the novel of the iron-master, John Wilkinson, is of particular interest as the great industrialist was born at Backbarrow just a few miles from Grange over Sands and later lived at a large house, Castlehead, in Lindale, now a Field Studies Centre where my younger daughter has recently got a part time job!
27 August 2009 from Anne
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Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
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- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
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- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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And i and my daughter were responsible for the large wall murals at Castlehead. Are any still there. e.g the wild flower one on one of the corridors?!
Hi Catherine
Sorry don't know if the murals are still in Castlehead, but will try to find out. If they are will attempt to load some pics on the entry for Smoke Across the Fell.
Anne