The team
Ruth Harrison
Will Newman
Angela Wilkinson
Catherine Mills
Charlotte Hodgson- Frances Hall
Ruth Gordon
Stephen Booth
Blythe Aimson
Other teams
The lost villages of Derwent and Ashopton Find!
It's strange how some places just cry out to be written about and the villages that were drowned under the Ladybower Reservoir have inspired at least 3 stories that I know about. There was Mary Cockett's Drowning Valley told for young children and published in 1978 and I thought that was really sad when I read it. Then there's a short story by Hilary Mantell: "The Clean Slate" in which a woman ponders the legendary quality of the story and its connection to her own family. The one I've only just read is Berlie Doherty's Deep Secret published by Puffin in 2003 which won the Carnegie Medal. It is a wonderfully vivid recreation of time and place and its just so, so sad. It made me cry even though the ending is positive and hopeful. Best book I've read for ages.28 October 2009 from Ruth Gordon
2 Comments
Leave a comment
Finds
- The lost villages of Derwent and Ashopton
- Fludd by Hilary Mantell
- A Beautiful Place for a Murder
- Jeannie of White Peak Farm
- Unrest of their Time
- Derbyshire wins the Booker Prize!
- John Buxton Hilton: Rescue from the Rose
- The Mermaid poem by Henry Kirke
- Poems of Peak and Dale
- Arnemetia
- Poole's Cavern, Buxton
- In Place of Execution....
- Scared to live
- The Jane Eyre Connection
- Haunted Derbyshire and the Peak District
- Narnia in the Peak District?
- The Wonders of the Peake...
- Night Angels: a scary episode on the Snake Pass
- Blue John
- Buxton under the crust.....
- Mysterious Mermaid in Derbyshire
- Ghost walks
- The poet and the pool.....
- More murder in the Peak District
- Inspired by the Peak
- Bygone Derbyshire clues
- Finished!
Recent posts
- Reading Detectives film
- Derbyshire Reading Detectives finale
- Reading Detectives in the News
- Buxton Ghost Walk
- Days at the Museum
- Stephen Booth
- Ghostwalkers in Buxton
- First meeting
Help the team
Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!
Hi Ruth
On a similar theme, have you read Haweswater by Sarah Hall about the flooding of Mardale in the Lake District? It is one of the Cumbrian Reading Detectives team finds and Sarah was guest author at the Grange over Sands finale event last week. She spoke fascinatingly about the importance of landscape, its influence on her writing and her own childhood in a remote hamlet in Cumbria.
Best wishes
Priscilla
Hi Ruth
I remember the impact Deep Secret had on me when I read it when it first came out. As well as the emotional impact of the story of the sisters, the whole unfairness of people being ripped from their homes for water company gain sticks in my mind. This was triggered only last week as I was reading Stephen Booth's Blind to the Bones where it mentions that whole farms had been moved because of fears of polluting the water. The sellout by the landed gentry in Deep Secret makes me think of the asset selling now being suggested by Gordon Brown.