Eleanor Graham (1896–1984)

Includes favourites Naomi Mitchison's "Spring", and Dekker's "Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?". It is a familiar theme in poetry (eg: Bunyan's "He that is down needs fear no fall" and Pope's "Happy the man whose wish and care") but it does resonate with me. I’m far from being a minimalist (“Haven’t you got enough ornaments?” a friend once said half-jokingly), but I find there are lots of things I can quite happily do without. In the current time of coronavirus lockdown, that’s probably just as well.… (plus d'informations)

An old-fashioned feelgood tale, set at the original time of writing, about a family of children who are forced to live in a barn after their parents disappear and the landlord throws them out. They make shift to look after themselves by cooking in a haybox, mending their own clothes, and doing odd jobs around the village, befriended by the schoolteacher and a local tramp, harassed by the District Visitor, who - aided by the respectable middle-class ladies of the village - plots to get them separated and sent to foster homes. It offers a stereotypical but informative and not over-romanticized view of life in rural England in the 1930s. MB 10-i-2018… (plus d'informations)