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Red Ike Find!

Get ready for a tale of gypsies, outlaws, poaching and romance set among the Cumberland fells. This really is a bodice ripping adventure of wronged heroines and their courageous, honest suitors.

The original story was written by 'Mr' Denwood but in a foreword by Mr Fowler Wright we learn that he obviously thought that the original script needed much editing and he actually appears on the spine as co-author. It is also interesting that in his preface, Hugh Walpole underlines the fact that Denwood is a poet NOT a novelist, but for all that he sees this as in some ways an advantage for more important to the book is the fact that "All his life long he has breathed the air of these hills and dales as though he were part of them. He has never self consciously thought : 'Now I will make a story of this'......It is often a tragical thing that the people who know the country best, its sights, sounds colours and skylines, are least able to write about what they know." This, for Walpole, is why this book is such a rare thing.

Having read these prefaces before starting the book, I was somewhat dubious as to what to expect. I certainly can see its flaws as one misfortune after another is heaped upon Red Ike and his companions, but for me, like Walpole, the strength of the book lies in the sense of place the author achieves. His descriptions of the fells, their wild and at times desolate beauty are written by someone with a deep understanding of, and love for, that part of the country. 

But even though this is really a tale good ultimately overcoming bad, it does contain strands of a social conscience. Red Ike makes plain his view that poaching cannot be against the law when many of the moors have been put into ownership by men who had little or no right to do so. We see the poverty in the city streets and the easy descent into prostitution by women led astray by evil men. 

30 October 2009 from Anne

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