Cross Country E-Book

Peter Ashley

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 225

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

In Cross Country photographer and author Peter Ashley unleashes his passion for Blighty. He takes us on an enlightening jaunt that encompasses many of England’s most loved regions. His love of buildings and landscape extends far beyond architecture in picturesque surroundings. By combining personal reminiscence and an ear for intriguing anecdote, he shows us with wit, and sometimes irreverent comment, just how richly varied the fabric of England is: abandoned Cornish tin mines above tide-washed caves; Norfolk boat sheds leaning on salt marches; Romney Marsh shepherd’s houses disappearing behind roadside willows; and hedges looked over in Wiltshire. Local details are found in both Essex estuaries and Cumbrian sand dunes; and long abandoned railway lines are once again pressed into service to take us around his beloved High Leicestershire. Ashley never misses the curious and neglected – be it a sheep wash in the Cotswolds or a disused petrol pump in Herefordshire. He travels deep into t eh countryside he cares about. His wry observations allow us to rediscover and delight in what many of us might previously have deemed familiar territory.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Cross Country

Squirrels & Grapes

Books & Magpies

Flint & Samphire

Sheep & Shingle

Walls & Wool

Mud & Oysters

Hedges & Signposts

Fish & Tin

Bells & Whistles

Bibliography

Index

This Edition First Published 2011

© 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Executive Commissioning Editor: Helen Castle

Project Editor: Miriam Swift

Assistant Editor: Calver Lezama

ISBN 978-0-470-68611-9 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-119-97105-4 (Ebk)

ISBN 978-1-119-97106-1 (Ebk)

ISBN 978-1-119-97102-3 (Ebk)

Cover Design, Page Design, Layouts and Maps by Jeremy Tilston Printed and Bound in Italy by Printer Trento Srl

The Front Cover Illustration Is Taken from a Pre-War Childrens’ Picture Book Called Motors. the Book Is a Treasure Store of 1930S’ Transport Illustrations by An Artist Called Douglas Lionel Mays (1900-91). There Is No Publisher Or Printer Mentioned. The Author Found it Tucked Away in the Dark At the Back of An Antique Shop in Lechlade, Gloucestershire.

All Photographs © Peter Ashley

P 53 Illustration from The Witch’s Hat © Tony Meeuwissen

Previous Page

Cross-country lane between Blaston and Horninghold, Leicestershire

Dedication

For Teresa, with love.

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to Mike Goldmark for his help and considerable support on Cross Country. My hear tfelt thanks go to him and all at the Goldmark Gallery in Uppingham.

Stephen Allen, George Ashley, Wilfred Ashley, Kathy Ashley, Tom Barr, Lucy Bland, David and Ruth Bull, Helen Castle, Christopher Clark, Teresa Cox, English Heritage, Rupert Farnsworth, Ron Flaxman, Jay Goldmark, Abigail Grater, Leigh Hooper, Stuart Kendall, Calver Lezama, Maria Mitchell, Matthew Mitchell, National Trust, Roger Porter, Biff Raven-Hill, Neil Sharpe, Margaret Shepherd, David Stanhope, Gerald Stickler, Chris Strachan, Miriam Swift, Jeremy Tilston, Ken and Hazel Wallace, Gill Whitley, Philip Wilkinson.

Cross Country

Introduction

Pyramid selling, Holt, Norfolk

Roadside sign, Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex

I only went abroad for the first time when I was 30 - to Paris on a British Midland Viscount with curtains at the windows - and, although I have indeed enjoyed occasional foreign forays, it has been England that has taken up so much of my time and attention. The trouble is I have, like my father before me, an insatiable appetite for interesting- looking things, particularly in the countryside, and rural England is stuffed to the gills with them. I also have a problem in that I like going on about it to anyone wholl listen, and so have made people fall off bar stools with the constant recounting of my travels, trying to keep their attention with the glittering eye of a bucolic Ancient Mariner. If I lived abroad, like a dear friend of mine who sits on a mountainside in Piedmont staring at a Hornby coal truck, Id be called an anglophile.

Anglophile. Thats the word we use to describe someone who loves England, but it tends to be the label attached to those from other lands who find this remarkable, beautiful country so absorbing, and perhaps somehow better than the one they were born in. What is it that they find so much suited to their taste and sensibilities? It could be social: Your policemen are so wonderful; it could be political (although often thats difficult to understand); and, of course, it could be the roseate view thats somehow bound up with looking at exported English period television dramas. So its also the sense of history, of which we have an awful lot by anybodys standards. It could be all of these things, but perhaps its more likely to be topographical. If your view of life is the downtown shopping mall in Birmingham, Alabama, you may want to see the Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham, West Midlands. Those who hanker after a taste of the Old Country may inevitably be drawn to the stereotypical whistle-stop tour: London, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, York and then off to Edinburgh, the passing countryside a blurred panorama outside an air-conditioned coach window. England reduced to a set of postcards or, more likely, files of images on a camera memory chip that will never be printed out. No, I think the true anglophile looks further than the next hotel stopover.