The team
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
Other teams
Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection Find!
I've spent the afternoon driving around the New Forest -- sometimes in a dog cart but mostly in a lovely Rolls. I've watched as my companions bought a stolen caravan, put one over on a jumped-up, nouveau landowner, and thwarted the plans of a German spy. We've played cricket on the village green and witnessed the slow decline of the landed gentry in this neck of the woods. And we've seen off Communist trouble-makers and wealthy Americans! What fun!Of course, this was between the pages of a book -- The Berry Scene by Dornford Yates. Published in 1947, this is a series of short stories ranging from the introduction of the motor car to the post-WW2 period -- and largely set around White Ladies in the county of Hampshire, the home of Yates' Berry Pleydell. This is a largely nostalgic, bitter-sweet look at a vanished England, embodied in this conservative (small c) and rural county. Now, Dornford Yates never lived in Hampshire but he did visit on a caravanning holiday after coming down from Oxford in 1907. Tenuous? Perhaps, but White Ladies functions very much as a character in the Berry books, and there are some lovely descriptions of the New Forest. Reading the books today, one is somewhat taken aback by the unabashed snobbery, but if you can swallow that, they're an entertaining way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon.
16 August 2009 from Rachel the editor
Finds
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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