Book description
Silver Ley, first published in 1931, is the second volume in Adrian
Bell's classic rural trilogy (the other volumes being Corduroy and The
Cherry Tree). In Silver Ley the author moves from being a farm
apprentice to a farm owner.
Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire, grew up in London,
and was educated at Uppingham School which he hated. His father, news
editor of the Observer, was a republican and a socialist and had no
truck with university education. His son was to do something useful; in
1920 he went to East Anglia to work as a farm apprentice. He
subsequently became a farmer himself. These experiences provide the
material for his famous rural trilogy, Corduroy, Silver Ley and The
Cherry Tree. In total he wrote over twenty-five books, he also set the
first Times in 1930 and continued to devise crosswords for the paper for
the next thirty years.
