Book description
Volume fourteen of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Beginning in
the winter of 1940/1 and ending with the uneasy 'sunrise' of peace in
1945, this volume sees Phillip Maddison striving idealistically to
hold a balance while lamenting the division and possible total ruin of
Europe, as he copes with the day-to-day problems of running the East
Anglian farm he has wrested from virtual wilderness. The pattern of
everyday living in those years is lovingly evoked: the bomber-haunted
nights, the petty profiteering and gossip of country life - all
essential, but often unrecorded, elements of the wartime scene. 'The
sequence will stand, at the end, as a massive emotional record.' Guardian
Henry Williamson was born in December 1895 and died in August
1977. The last great visionary of his generation, he was both loved
and misunderstood and his writing by turns famous and neglected. His
huge literary output fell into several groups. Apart from his
well-loved animal narratives he wrote direct accounts of his own life
in rural Norfolk and Devon, numerous short stories and two
semi-autobiographical groups of novels - The Flax Dream and A
Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, of which the last volume, The Gale of
the World appeared in 1969. His last book, The Scandaroon, the tale of
a pigeon, was published in 1972.
