Local writing can be so powerful
Especially to those living near where the book was written
My interest in the Suffolk author George Ewart Evans dates back more than 50 years, and the moment when I realised that I knew people who were the children of those Evans had interviewed at Blaxhall in Suffolk. Working on local farms, I also recognised many of the words and ways his books described. It was this fascination that led me to write my own book Where are the Fellows who Cut the Hay that builds on those he had written more than 60 years ago.
Right now I’m reading An Hour Glass on the Run, a book by another Suffolk author Allan Jobson who was a contemporary of Evans and living ten miles from Blaxhall, at Middleton, must have known Evans. Both wrote about rural life and both wrote about local people they knew, who worked on the land.
Reading Jobson’s book I learn that the corner on which an architect I know was one called Hogs Corner, and that an ancestor of someone for who my wife was a bridesmaid more than 60 years ago, farmed at Middleton before moving to Westleton where that former bride is now buried.
Reading this book, and the feelings of nostalgia it evokes, reassures me that my plans for the launch of the paperback edition of Where are the Fellows who Cut the Hay in March are on the right track. I’m going to be searching for as many grandchildren of those George Ewart Evans interviewed for his books as I can find. They’ll be invited to a yet to be confirmed venue, treated to a screening of A Writer’s Suffolk which was filmed at Blaxhall, and hear some of the stories about their grandparents I mention in my book.
To make this happen I need help with publicity, ideally a sponsor so that I can make the event free to attend, and for those I find to be as enthusiastic I am about making this a memorable afternoon. Those who attend will want to talk as well as listen, so there will be tea, cake and lots a of time for folk to discover others who share their past.