In Pursuit of Spring-Edward Thomas's way of observing 'every small thing.'

These chapters show Thomas at his most relaxed, enjoying his cycling or walking  and his close observations. They are fairly random in nature - inscriptions on graves, always a source of irony for him, pub names and then overall, of course, signs of Spring.

 I find in these chapters a great deal about Edward Thomas and his process of observing and of writing. He prefers walking to cycling when there is mist - walking lets you 'see every small thing one by one',
 'the pale green larch plantation  where another chiff-chaff was singing, and the tall elm tipped by a linnet pausing and musing a few notes..every primrose and celandine and dandelion on the banks, every silvered gren leaf of honeysuckle up in the hedge, every patch of brightest moss, every luminous drop on a thorn tip.'



Elms - I chose this Wiltshire picture because I think I'm forgetting and some just don't know, how huge elms were and what a loss was suffered when they went.


When he arrived at Trowbridge on a fine Easter Monday he  met a crowd leaving the town to walk in the country nearby. The passage gives us insight into his relation to people: he does not mind  groups from a country town like this, or a gathering at a village event  but he is uneasy and troubled by  the crowds that emerge from trains at Clapham junction:

'perhaps I ought to call my feeling fear: alarm comes first, followed rapidly by dislike. .....it is a disintegrated crowd, rather suspicious and shy perhaps, where few know, or could guess much about, the others. When I find myself among them, I am more confused and uneasy than in any other crowd. I cannot settle down in it to notice the three or four or half dozen types, as I should do at Swindon, or Swansea, or Coventry; nor yet please myself as with the general look of a village mob of forty or fifty,  and a few of the most remarkable individuals.
 

We easily forget that many of  Thomas's poems concern carefully observed 'remarkable individuals'.

More insights into his sense of himself follow as he cycles:

'It was as easy as riding in a cart, and more satisfying to a restless man. At the same time I was a great deal nearer to being a disembodied spirit than I can often be. I was not at all  tired, so far  as I knew. No people or thoughts embarrassed me. I fed through the senses directly, but very temporarily, through the eyes chiefly, and was happier than is extricable or seems reasonable.'

The chapter ends with one of the best known passages from In Pursuit:

‘I went out into the village at about half-past nine in the dark, quiet evening. A few stars penetrated the soft sky; a few lights shone on earth, from a distant farm seen through a gap in the cottages. Single and in groups, separated by gardens and bits of orchard, the cottages were vaguely discernible; here and there a yellow window square gave out a feeling of home, tranquillity, security. Nearly all were silent. Ordinary speech was not to be heard, but from one house came the sounds of a harmonium being played and a voice singing a hymn, both faintly. A dog barked far off. After an interval a gate fell-to lightly. Nobody was on the road....

  The pollard willows fringing the green, which in the sunlight resemble mops, were now very much like a procession of men, strange primeval beings, pausing to meditate in the darkness....

I felt that I could walk on thus, sipping the evening silence and solitude, endlessly. '

Bradford-on-Avon

 

Bradford -on-Avon, sitting in a small public park by the Avon, he meets again the Other Man, 'staring at the chapel on the bridge, and its weather-vane of a gilded perch.'

 

 

He was also going to Wells and they agreed to ride to ride together, though Thomas is clearly ambivalent. Did this Other Man exist? Perhaps at this point he does, though soon I begin to doubt again, or to confuse him so much with Thomas that it has crept into my novel unawares.  This man also writes topographical books, is concerned with how much they will pay, and crucially he notes everything in his notebooks.The Other Man 'rambled on and on':

 

'his  main point was that he did not like writing . He had been attempting the impossible task of reducing undigested notes about all sorts of details to a grammatical, continuous narrative. He abused notebooks violently. He said that they blinded him to everything that would not go into the form of notes; or at any rate, he could never afterwards reproduce the great effects of nature and fill in the interstices merely-which was all they were good for-from the notes.The notes - often of things which he would otherwise have forgotten- had to fill the whole canvas. Wheras, if he had taken none, then only the important, what he truly cared for, would have survived in his memory, arranged perhaps not as they were in Nature, but at least according to the tendencies of his own spirit.'

 

That last phrase suggests to me a vital element of poetry - something beyond mere description.

I feel fairly  certain  that Thomas himself had the same reservations about his notebook -keeping - maybe my idea came from In Pursuit of Spring.

 

An extract from the novel: a sprained ankle is confining him to the house. 

'Memory must be his source – his memory and his field notebooks, which he had Helen fetch from the Cockshott Lane study. He had always kept a notebook everywhere he went, and the detail, the thoughts he’d had, the conversations with solitary strangers on the road, fed him with ideas. Sometimes he told himself that if he stopped using notebooks, if he only looked, allowed himself to experience passionately what he encountered, it would be better. It might free him from that sense he often had that he was nothing but a remote observer, a ghost invisible to other people. Perhaps, too, without a notebook he would remember only the poignant, vital aspects of what he encountered instead of risking losing that significance in a mass of detail. But he could not break the habit now – it was part of who he was.'

 

They ride on but glide down the steep hills to part at the town of Shepton Mallett in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. Edward Thomas mentions the prison:

'The stone prison and all its apertures, like a great wasps' nest, was a punishment to look at in the darkness.' 

In the course of work I've visited this 400 year-old prison - or rather prisoners in it - and have a half-recollection of a prison officer showing me the old gallows there - I had an unpleasant feeling that he was regretting the 'good old days'. there.

HMP Shepton Mallett has actually been  closed down last year, not before time. But what on earth can they do with it? Not sure it would convert to a hotel and art gallery like little Oxford Prison, of which I was rather fond.



 

 

 

But Shepton Mallett town gives Edward a pleasant  evening  and a night's rest at a temperance hotel ( four shillings for supper, bed and breakfast):

 

'I found a good fire and peace in the company of a man who studied Bradshaw. With the aid of maps I travelled my road again, dwelling chiefly on Tellisford, its white bridge over the Frome, the ruined mill and cottage, the round tower of Vaggs Hill Farm, and the distinct green valley which enclosed them, and after this, the Nettlebridge Valley and the dark house above it.'

 



 To buy A Conscious Englishman direct from the publisher - info@streetbooks.co.uk
 

 Laurel Books  for a recent  edition of In Pursuit of Spring

 

 Poem.

There are several poems that are observations of 'remarkable individuals':
The Gypsy, The Huxter, Man and Dog, Up in the Wind of course, The New Year, A Gentleman and the marvellous Jack Noman in

                           May 23rd

THERE never was a finer day,
And never will be while May is May,--
The third, and not the last of its kind;
But though fair and clear the two behind
Seemed pursued by tempests overpast;
And the morrow with fear that it could not last
Was spoiled. To-day ere the stones were warm
Five minutes of thunderstorm
Dashed it with rain, as if to secure,
By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure.

 

At mid-day then along the lane
Old Jack Noman appeared again,
Jaunty and old, crooked and tall,
And stopped and grinned at me over the wall,
With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole
And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll
Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale?
He was welcome as the nightingale.
Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack
"I've got my Indian complexion back"
Said he. He was tanned like a harvester,
Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur
That clung to his coat from last night's bed,
Like the ploughland crumbling red.
Fairer flowers were none on the earth
Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth,
Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket.
"Where did they come from, Jack?" "Don't ask it,
And you'll be told no lies." "Very well:
Then I can't buy." "I don't want to sell.
Take them and these flowers, too, free.
Perhaps you have something to give me?
Wait till next time. The better the day . . .
The Lord couldn't make a better, I say;
If he could, he never has done."
So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run,
Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill
And his cowslips from Wheatham hill.

'Twas the first day that the midges bit;
But though they bit me, I was glad of it:
Of the dust in my face, too, I was glad.
Spring could do nothing to make me sad.
Bluebells hid all the ruts in the copse.
The elm seeds lay in the road like hops,
That fine day, May the twenty-third,
The day Jack Noman disappeared.

 The new edition of In Pursuit of Spring by Little Toller books (March 2016) has photographs that may have been taken by Edward Thomas.

 

To follow route with Laurel Books, publisher of In Pursuit of Spring Edition see

www.inpursuitofspring.co.uk/

To buy A Conscious Englishman direct from the publisher,

info@streetbooks.co.uk     www.streetbooks.co.uk

In Pursuit of Spring,  - in Surrey.

I heard a cuckoo today. What a different spring this year than last. I remember the day I took these Surrey photos - it was freezing!

By one of those strange coincidences I had to visit on Wednesday the area of Thomas's first, London to Guildford, stretch - somewhere I've never been before. (It was a 'buyer collects' ebay purchase.)

We didn't have much time, but were able to visit first SHALFORD

The Common

'Crossing the little railway from the mills, I came
in sight of the Hog's Back, by which I must go
to Farnham. That even, straight ridge pointing
westward, and commanding the country far away
on either side, must have had a road along it since
man went upright, and must continue to have one
so long as it is a pleasure to move and to use the
eyes together. It is a road fit for the herald Mer-
cury and the other gods, because it is as much in
heaven as on earth. The road I was on, creeping
humbly and crookedly to avoid both the steepness
of the hills and the wetness of the valley, was by
comparison a mole run. Between me and the
Hog's Back flowed the Wey, and as the Tilling-
bourne approached it the valley spread out and
flattened into Shalford's long, wet common. My
road crossed the common, a rest for gypsies and
their ponies. Shalford village also is on the flat,
chiefly on the right hand side of the road, nearer
the hill, and away from the river, so that its out-
look over the levels gives it a resemblance to a
seaside village. Instead of the sea it had formerly
a fair ground of a hundred and forty acres. Its inn
is the " Queen Victoria " charmless name. ' IPS. (Still there)



Cold grey day in Shalford.


The North Downs

The North Downs , or the Surrey Hills, are more wooded and attractive than I would have imagined. Proportional to its size, Surrey is the most wooded county in England.
 

'The Downs were beginning to
give me some shelter, and I went on under them,
glad of the easier riding. The Tillingbourne here
was running closer under the Downs, and the river
level met the hillside more sharply than before.
The road bent above the meadows and showed them
flat to the very foot of a steep, brown slope covered
with beeches. The sky lightened lightened too
much : St. Martha's tower, almost reaching up into
the hurrying white rack, was dark on its dark hill.
So I came to Albury, which has the streamlet be-
tween it and the Downs, unlike Abinger Hammer,
Gomshall, and Shere. The ground, used for vege-
tables and plum trees, fell steeply down to the
water, beyond which it rose again as steeply in a
narrow field bounded horizontally by a yet steeper
strip of hazel coppice ; beyond this again the rise
was continued in a broader field extending to the
edge of the main hillside beech wood. Albury is
one of those villages possessing a neglected old
church and a brand-new one. In this case the
new is a decent enough one of alternating flint
and stone, built among trees on a gradual rise.
But the old one is too much like a shameless un-
buried corpse.

Twice I crossed the Tillingbourne, and came to
where it broadened into a pond. This water on
either side of the road was bordered by plumed
sedges and clubbed bulrushes. At the far side,
under the wooded Downside crowned by St. Martha's,
was a pale, shelterless mill of a ghostly bareness.
The aspens were breaking into yellow-green leaves
round about, especially one prone aspen on the left
where a drain was belching furious, tawny water into
the stream, and shaking the spears of the bulrushes.

As I went on towards Chilworth, gorse was blos-
soming on the banks of the road. Behind the
blossom rose up the masses of hillside wood, now
scarcely interrupted save by a few interspaces of
lawn-like grass.' IPS.

 

 www.geograph.com   St Martha's Church, Albury.
 

Albury sits in the south side at the foot  of the Downs. I liked this farm and the fisheries on the Albury Estate.:

But it was so bitterly cold that it was a pleasure to drive up the Downs to Newlands Corner and its Visitors' Centre.

 

And to take some more chilly-looking pictures:

 

 

 

 

'At first, [the Downs}

  were thoroughly tamed,
their smoothness made park-like, their trees mostly
fir. Beyond, their sides, of an almost uniform
gentle steepness, but advancing and receding,
hollowed and cleft, were adorned by unceasingly
various combinations of beech wood, of scattered
yew and thorn, of bare ploughland or young corn,
and of naked chalk.' IPS.

 

The warden told us that the weather was having a deleterious effect on the wildlife - migrating birds not arriving, 'not knowing where they are.'  We are complaining about the weather - inconvenient for us - but serious for the mammals and birds. An article in the Observer comments:

 

"Britain's continued freezing weather is threatening ever greater numbers of wild animals, birds and insects across the country, experts have warned. The current cold spell – one of the longest on record – is particularly affecting creatures that are already struggling to survive the loss of their habitats and changes in climate.
Examples include the hedgehog, which has already suffered a devastating loss of numbers over the past three decades and is now badly affected by the cold weather. In addition, threatened reptiles such as the grass snake and slowworm require sunny, warm conditions when they emerge from hibernation. Such a prospect is still remote, say meteorologists.
... 
For hedgehogs, the prolonged cold weather has had a particularly severe impact. "Many animals that went into hibernation in November or December last year are still sleeping," said Fay Vass, chief executive of the Hedgehog Preservation Society. "The weather is not yet warm enough to wake them. Usually they would be up and about by now."
The problem was that the longer a hedgehog remained asleep, the weaker it got and the less energy an animal had to restore itself to wakefulness, added Vass. "It depends just how healthy and well-fed an animal was when it went into hibernation. But in general, the longer the cold weather lasts, the greater the number of animals that will not wake up at all."
 
Experts stress that the public can help. The RSPB has urged householders to keep bird feeders regularly topped up with high-energy, high-fat food and to keep water dishes filled. Similarly, the Hedgehog Preservation Society recommends leaving plentiful water supplies and also food, either meaty cat or dog meals or specialist hedgehog food."

Another article specifically mentions the chiff-chaff's lateness this year.

The drive from here into London, our destination, probably traced some of Thomas's route - near Epsom, and in through Wandsworth, but apart from the ever-flowering gorse, not really recognisable.

Poems:  Shelley: Winter

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!      


Another bird poem, in which Edward Thomas positively relishes winter.

Bird's Nests

The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind,
Some torn, others dislodged, all dark,
Everyone sees them: low or high in tree,
Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.

Since there's no need of eyes to see them with
I cannot help a little shame
That I missed most, even at eye's level, till
The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.

'Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests
Still in their places, now first known,
At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not,
Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.

And most I like the winter nests deep-hid
That leaves and berries fell into:
Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts,
And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.
                                                                 * * *
 
 Publishing Matters - a surprise sent on to me by Frank Egerton today, 6th April.

'Guardian Books, 5th April 2013:Reader reviews roundup

A biographical novel about the poet Edward Thomas 

Bardly behaved? … Edward Thomas. Photograph: EO Hoppe/Corbis

 

Hello and welcome back to our reader reviews roundup, which returns after a two-week easter break. Though the books desk might have been slacking, our reader reviewers have not.

One of the liveliest conversations has been inspired by a novel about the poet Edward Thomas. It was published in February by the Oxfordshire-based "micro-publisher" Streetbooks, whose founder Frank Egerton says: "My interest is in artisan publishing: which involves high quality, regional fiction, marketed locally in person and globally via the Internet. An analogy I like is that of the micro-brewery: a combination of tradition, passion and the opportunities offered by new technology."
A Conscious Englishman is by former teacher and probation officer Margaret Keeping, and either she has some very conscientious literary friends or her publisher's micro-brewery policy is producing some pretty heady results in the Edward Thomas fan club.
First to review it was ISWilton, who wrote:

What I love most about this book is the voice of his wife Helen. Much of the book is told from her viewpoint and we understand the pain of being married to a struggling, and sometimes, difficult artist.

Next came Georgeed, who felt Keeping conveyed Thomas's love of the English countryside particularly well.
evmason wrote the clincher over Easter weekend:

Her gift is to create in prose the landscapes and moods which Thomas captured in his poems. In showing us the genesis of 'The Manor Farm', 'Old Man', 'In Memoriam (Easter 1915)', she sends us straight back to the poetry, and for a writer who loves Thomas's work, what finer service could she render?
Definitely worth checking out then.' 

                             ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I'm glad to say that people I do know personally have all, without exception, also said how much they enjoyed it. Some knew a great deal about Edward Thomas, others very little. This is the full evmason review: Timely, Shapely. 2014 sees the 100th anniversary of the First World War; attention will be paid to the writers who remind us. Already the London stage has hosted a play about Edward Thomas, and this Easter the BBC begins readings from his book 'The Pursuit of Spring'. Margaret Keeping's 'A Conscious Englishman' is timely. Her research is impeccable and she is scrupulous in indicating when she is quoting directly from letters, diaries, poems; where she must imagine, she convinces. Biography can be shapeless, but here the problem is solved by structuring the book around Thomas's search for an answer to the tormenting question - how should he respond to war? This sharp focus excises undigested lumps of research, much to this reader's pleasure. (It could be argued that the relationship with Edna Clarke-Hall is a diversion, but you have only to track her photograph on the internet to understand her allure.) Helen Thomas has written devotedly of her marriage, and although to a later generation it may lack attraction, Margaret Keeping is wise and generous enough to understand that where both parties have needs which are being met, third-party censoriousness is inappropriate. Her Helen is allowed to speak, and her voice is an engaging one. Above all, Thomas is a poet of those spots of time - in Margaret Keeping's words, those "moment[s] out of time that could contain something everlasting, a rapturous moment, always remembered." Her gift is to create in prose the landscapes and moods which Thomas captured in his poems. In showing us the genesis of 'The Manor Farm', 'Old Man', 'In Memoriam (Easter 1915)', she sends us straight back to the poetry, and for a writer who loves Thomas's work, what finer service could she render? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Another surprise review on Amazon - I hadn't been checking: A good read, 24 Mar 2013 By Anabella - See all my reviews This review is from: A Conscious Englishman (Paperback) 'This excellent book about the important but often overlooked Anglo-Welsh poet Edward Thomas, can be delightful. We experience the blossom of spring, the smell of apples and perry pears, him pushing his children on the swing in the orchard above the wide Gloucestershire fields. And there are some touching, not to mention passionate, moments with his wife Helen. Margaret Keeping writes very skilfully, achieving some most economical character studies - 'Edward complained I treated everyone as if they were my children and they did not like that. It was nonsense, I was interested in people and hoped they would like me.' One can just see this bustling, fussing albeit well-meaning person driving everyone mad. But one can also see what an anchor she was to Thomas. The book is an account of their relationship and the relationship with other literary greats of the day, particularly Robert Frost. It is also, of course, the story of Thomas's heart searching and indecision as he clambered to brief fame as a poet, and as such it deftly portrays selfishness, depression and anger. Most of the narrative is in the third person, but some sections are given to Helen, which is effective in contrasting the down to earth practical point of view of a mother with that of an artist prepared to give up so much for his art. It points up both aspects and increases the feeling of reality in the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in poetry, particularly turn of the century poets, English/Welsh rural life, or just a good read. '       -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Pursuit of  Spring, 2.

Chapter III    Guildford to Dunbridge, and a riff on clay pipes.

On the Hog's Back he sees gypsies:

'I liked the look of the gypsies camping... If they were not there in fact, they would have to be invented. They are at home there. See them at nightfall, with their caravans drawn up facing the wind, and the men by the half-door at the back smoking, while the hobbled horses are grazing and the children playing near.'

(I owned a 'vardo' like this for some years but moved to a terraced house so it went to a good home.)

On to Farnham for breakfast, and to see:
'A small inn labelled "Cobbett's Birthplace" in letters as big as are usually given to the name of a brewer.'.
No longer:

'The Jolly Farmer burnt down completely in the 1980's - with the post box outside all that remained. We celebrate its resilience by hanging it from one of our rebuilt walls! '.   Hhhhmn.

He travelled on westward to Willey Mill on the Wey, the Surrey/Hampshire border.

 



cc Wordpress

Continuing on the Pilgrims' Way near Guildford

He had ridden  into Hampshire  where hops were grown then:'Many were the buildings related to hops, whose mellow brick work seemed to have been stained by a hundred harvests.'
In a remarkable passage Thomas describes a hunt, emphasising the scarlet riders and ending:

'Backwards and forwards galloped the riders before the right crossing of the railway was taken. The fox died in obscurity two miles away.'    I read restrained dislike,into that 'Backwards and forwards...'

After this the chapter diverts from topology into riffs on:
 local surnames,
  a tale of two sisters , Martha and Mary, with the characteristics implied by those names,

and then into clay pipes. Edward Thomas always carried his 'clay' a simple workman's pipe, and he riffs at great length on their different shapes, thickness, thinness and suitability.

found in our roof.

 

 Surely he is laughing at himself  in his pages of discourse on these pipes, good and bad. He follows them with bemusement at the Other Man's obsession with weather vanes and 'stupor' from having to listen to Thomas.

He describes the perfect pipe:

'This perfect clay pipe came from a shop at Oxford. Everywhere else I have looked in vain for them. I have never seen any one else smoking them who had not got them from me.
Tastes differ, but in this matter I cannot believe that anyone capable of distinguishing one clay from another would deny this one's excellence.
The Other Man cared nothing for the matter. He awoke from the stupor to which he had been reduced by listening, and asked,-
"Did you see that weather-vane at Albury in the shape of a pheasant? or the fox-shape one by the ford at Butts green? ......'

The Oxford tobacconist on the High Street still exists:



Poem - Digging, the first poem written after Edward Thomas enlisted. He sweeps through aeons of time.

Digging

What matter makes my spade for tears or mirth,
Letting down two clay pipes into the earth?
The one I smoked, the other a soldier
Of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet
Perhaps. The dead man's immortality
Lies represented lightly with my own,
A yard or two nearer the living air
Than bones of ancients who, amazed to see
Almighty God erect the mastodon,
Once laughed, or wept, in this same  light of day.                                                            

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

     A marvellous review on the Guardian web-site.

Timely, Shapely.

2014 sees the 100th anniversary of the First World War; attention will be paid to the writers who remind us. Already the London stage has hosted a play about Edward Thomas, and this Easter the BBC begins readings from his book 'The Pursuit of Spring'. Margaret Keeping's 'A Conscious Englishman' is timely.

Her research is impeccable and she is scrupulous in indicating when she is quoting directly from letters, diaries, poems; where she must imagine, she convinces. Biography can be shapeless, but here the problem is solved by structuring the book around Thomas's search for an answer to the tormenting question - how should he respond to war? This sharp focus excises undigested lumps of research, much to this reader's pleasure. (It could be argued that the relationship with Edna Clarke-Hall is a diversion, but you have only to track her photograph on the internet to understand her allure.)

Helen Thomas has written devotedly of her marriage, and although to a later generation it may lack attraction, Margaret Keeping is wise and generous enough to understand that where both parties have needs which are being met, third-party censoriousness is inappropriate. Her Helen is allowed to speak, and her voice is an engaging one.

Above all, Thomas is a poet of those spots of time - in Margaret Keeping's words, those "moment[s] out of time that could contain something everlasting, a rapturous moment, always remembered." Her gift is to create in prose the landscapes and moods which Thomas captured in his poems. In showing us the genesis of 'The Manor Farm', 'Old Man', 'In Memoriam (Easter 1915)', she sends us straight back to the poetry, and for a writer who loves Thomas's work, what finer service could she render?

 

                                 -------------------------------------------------------------------

Another surprise review on Amazon - I hadn't been checking:

A good read,

By

Anabella - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Conscious Englishman (Paperback)

This excellent book about the important but often overlooked Anglo-Welsh poet Edward Thomas, can be delightful. We experience the blossom of spring, the smell of apples and perry pears, him pushing his children on the swing in the orchard above the wide Gloucestershire fields. And there are some touching, not to mention passionate, moments with his wife Helen.

Margaret Keeping writes very skilfully, achieving some most economical character studies - 'Edward complained I treated everyone as if they were my children and they did not like that. It was nonsense, I was interested in people and hoped they would like me.' One can just see this bustling, fussing albeit well-meaning person driving everyone mad. But one can also see what an anchor she was to Thomas.

The book is an account of their relationship and the relationship with other literary greats of the day, particularly Robert Frost. It is also, of course, the story of Thomas's heart searching and indecision as he clambered to brief fame as a poet, and as such it deftly portrays selfishness, depression and anger.

Most of the narrative is in the third person, but some sections are given to Helen, which is effective in contrasting the down to earth practical point of view of a mother with that of an artist prepared to give up so much for his art. It points up both aspects and increases the feeling of reality in the story.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in poetry, particularly turn of the century poets, English/Welsh rural life, or just a good read.