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Why Pick Lydden? Find!
I couldn't resist recording Honor Wyatt & George Ellidge's Why pick on us? as a find. Their son is Robert Wyatt whose music I have been listening to since my teens.
At 47, George Ellidge was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. According to the text on the book jacket, the book is about how "he and his wife... come to terms with his illness." However, the energy & charm of their family story overrides the illness narrative. Their immediate reaction to George's diagnosis is to travel across Portugal with limited funds and without tents.
Even more quixotic is their plan to move to a "dream house" in Kent. In 1956, their purchase of Wellington House in the village of Lydden is the realisation of this dream. It is a house that an estate agent might label as a spacious, character, period property- needs some work... The family pull together in making Wellington House habitable and even more characterful.
This is the place that would be a refuge and inspiration for the musicians who formed bands like The Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine, Caravan & Gong.
http://soundsfromthespring.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-honour-of-honor-wyatt.html
Usually, Rock biographers strain to reveal the childhood of their subjects. So, for fans of Robert Wyatt, this book offers an unusually intimate portrait of the musician as a young boy. He builds forts under the tea table, enjoys family jokes about sausages, plays a full part in adult conversation, thrives during a term in a French primary school and forms his own skiffle band in the cellar.
I was shocked to read that, like his youngest son, George Ellidge had a very serious fall, (down the stairs of Wellington House, breaking his neck.) Why Pick On Us? was published in 1958 and, sadly, George died just five years later in 1963. His generosity, stoicism and optimism in face of the illness is remarkable.
Honor Wyatt had a long career as a journalist & broadcaster. She wrote a novel called The Heathen which H.E. Bates described as "a really unusual novel... the story of a woman who sets more value on things than on the people who own them... its writing is a mature and a continual delight." [Morning Post.] Her literary friends included Robert Graves and Barbara Pym. She co-authored A La Pym, The Barbara Pym Cookery Book.
15 October 2009 from Rob Illingworth
Finds
- Pangbourne - a love affair with a gorilla
- Out of the Blue by Val Rutt
- The Kent Factor
- Grubby Tales from Beardy Ardagh
- The Men of Kent March On
- The Curse of Aphis Minimus
- One True Crime
- Why Pick Lydden?
- From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea!
- Dover- Life's a Beach
- The ideal home
- The Tramping Methodist - more tramping in Kent!
- The Small Years by Frank Kendon
- Everyone Loves Rupert Bear!
- Knole
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 4
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 3
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 2
- On the write tracks in literary Kent Day 1
- On the write tracks in literary Kent
- Penshurst is the Place
- From Country Pursuits to the Western Front
- Edmund Blunden - echoes from Yalding church bells
- Jane Austen walk
- John Knatchbull from Quarterdeck to Gallows
- Catherine Aird
- More from the tramps .....
- Van Gogh in Ramsgate?
- Tissot A Passing Storm c1876
- The Downfall of a Reading Detective
- Male Georgian/Regency authors
- Bluestocking writers
- Sketches By Boz - We must leave town!
- If You're Going to Snodland...
- The Kent Tramp Trail
- The Altar in the Loft
- Regency and Georgian Literature with a Kent Connection
- Jane Austen and Godmersham by The Rev. S. Graham Brade-Birks
- Kent Clues!
Recent posts
- Poetry dropping in Sandwich
- Reading Detectives film
- Out of the Blue - continued
- Denton Welch
- 45 London Road Sevenoaks
- To Penshurst
- Kent Finale!
- Mon 21 Sep 10.30 am DETECTIVE EVENT AT CENTRE FOR KENTISH STUDIES, MAIDSTONE
- Cat Lovers
- W H Davies
- Silence on the home front as my hard drive has died
- Jeffery Farnol
- Denton Welch, a look back to simpler times
- What Jane Austen really looked like !
- Life in the Country: With Quotations by Jane Austen and Silhouettes by Her Nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh
- First Meeting for Kent
- Jane Austen - Monster Mash Up
- Launch of Kent's Reading Detectives Team on 12 August
- Jane Austen Heritage Link
- Reading Detectives are starting soon in Kent
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