Spring’s ephemeral but exquisite beauty inspired many of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems and his Journal. In his own words this wonderful season is ‘all in a rush with richness‘.
Continue reading “Gerard Manley Hopkins in Spring”Category: The English Countryside
John Constable Country
The Stour valley is ‘Constable Country’. His wonderful pictures of this place, especially this ‘Hay Wain‘ painting, have become ‘part of the landscape of every English mind’.
Continue reading “John Constable Country”Chronicles of the Countryside
Ronald Blythe was a creative writer with a simple life-style, born and bred in Suffolk, the voice of a vanishing past in these shires of old England. I pay my own tribute to this chronicler of a slower, more gentle way of life who died this year aged 100.
Continue reading “Chronicles of the Countryside”Is This the Song of Spring?
After a very cold night we wake to a crisp winter morning of frosted grass with the bright sun rising over the house tops. This is ‘day’s most sacred hour‘, full of the ‘innocence of a new born day‘.
Continue reading “Is This the Song of Spring?”


