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In the Country
At the end of the 1960s, Kenneth Allsop, a famous television presenter and literary man-about-town, left London and settled amid the sunken lanes, ancient forests and chalk streams of west Dorset. He was at his very happiest here. He thought it the loveliest place on earth, and for three years he devoted a weekly newspaper column to his day-to-day life.
- GenresBritish LiteratureNature
184 pages, Paperback
First published December 7, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 5, 2022
Well, this should have ticked all my boxes, nature, creatures, journal style writing.
In reality this book was all over the place. The writing was staccato and erratic. Allsop completely contradicts himself at every turn, one minute claiming to love nature, then the next blasting it out of existence if it doesn't fit into his aesthetic. See below :
From a man that bemoans the use of pesticides and the destruction of the countryside, but then has a few wasps in his back garden and decides to get the council in, who destroy them with cyanide powder! The man that states nature will do what it will do but wantonly destroys a magpie nest, throwing the eggs on the floor to kill them, all because he witnessed the magpies stealing other bird eggs and seeks revenge! WTF?!! What kind of adult does that?! Then laments on the loveliness of badgers, but lets his three dogs go roaming off unattended, them coming back with "bloody snouts, no doubt from a nip"!! So basically letting your dogs bait badgers then.
I've never known a "nature writer" write such contrary bollocks in all my life. The man may have been a TV treasure but he certainly gets a thumbs down from me.
In reality this book was all over the place. The writing was staccato and erratic. Allsop completely contradicts himself at every turn, one minute claiming to love nature, then the next blasting it out of existence if it doesn't fit into his aesthetic. See below :
From a man that bemoans the use of pesticides and the destruction of the countryside, but then has a few wasps in his back garden and decides to get the council in, who destroy them with cyanide powder! The man that states nature will do what it will do but wantonly destroys a magpie nest, throwing the eggs on the floor to kill them, all because he witnessed the magpies stealing other bird eggs and seeks revenge! WTF?!! What kind of adult does that?! Then laments on the loveliness of badgers, but lets his three dogs go roaming off unattended, them coming back with "bloody snouts, no doubt from a nip"!! So basically letting your dogs bait badgers then.
I've never known a "nature writer" write such contrary bollocks in all my life. The man may have been a TV treasure but he certainly gets a thumbs down from me.
March 7, 2024
Two stars feels a little stingy, but it's definitely not worth rounding up to three!
This book takes the form of a nature diary running from January to December. It's the kind of book I usually love, but I didn't enjoy this one. For one thing, the writing is a bit too self-consciously poetical and some of his similes and metaphors, while sounding very beautiful, don't actually make any sense if you stop to think about what he's really saying.
I also got a bit annoyed with his judgemental attitude - he sounds like one of those city types who move to the country with a definite idea of what country life is like and then complain because it doesn't match up. At one point, he criticises the local farmers for putting up farm buildings using metal instead of hand-crafted brick and tile. He acknowledges that the latter would be far more expensive, but apparently that doesn't matter as long as it looks nice!!! (If cost is so unimportant, why doesn't he offer to pay for the more expensive materials himself?!) He lets his dogs roam freely around the countryside killing other people's livestock and doesn't seem remotely bothered when one of them is knocked down and killed by a car while doing this, yet he feels guilty for destroying a wasps' nest.
Most bizarrely and disturbingly of all, he decides that he can't prevent a wild pigeon mating with his fantails because it mean accusing himself of "racialism, of colour prejudice, of Hitlerian discrimination, of Aryan barbarism...with such violence on my conscience, how could I again eat at my favourite Pakistani restaurant..." Yet he is quite happy, later in the year, to listen to a comedian telling racist jokes...
According to the obituary I read about him, he was in constant pain following a leg injury and died of a barbiturate overdose in the same year that this book was published. So perhaps a lot of the grumpiness in his writing is due to how poorly he was feeling. If so, it feels a bit mean giving only 2 stars, but I feel I have to rate based on what I thought of the book, and not on the author's circumstances.
This book takes the form of a nature diary running from January to December. It's the kind of book I usually love, but I didn't enjoy this one. For one thing, the writing is a bit too self-consciously poetical and some of his similes and metaphors, while sounding very beautiful, don't actually make any sense if you stop to think about what he's really saying.
I also got a bit annoyed with his judgemental attitude - he sounds like one of those city types who move to the country with a definite idea of what country life is like and then complain because it doesn't match up. At one point, he criticises the local farmers for putting up farm buildings using metal instead of hand-crafted brick and tile. He acknowledges that the latter would be far more expensive, but apparently that doesn't matter as long as it looks nice!!! (If cost is so unimportant, why doesn't he offer to pay for the more expensive materials himself?!) He lets his dogs roam freely around the countryside killing other people's livestock and doesn't seem remotely bothered when one of them is knocked down and killed by a car while doing this, yet he feels guilty for destroying a wasps' nest.
Most bizarrely and disturbingly of all, he decides that he can't prevent a wild pigeon mating with his fantails because it mean accusing himself of "racialism, of colour prejudice, of Hitlerian discrimination, of Aryan barbarism...with such violence on my conscience, how could I again eat at my favourite Pakistani restaurant..." Yet he is quite happy, later in the year, to listen to a comedian telling racist jokes...
According to the obituary I read about him, he was in constant pain following a leg injury and died of a barbiturate overdose in the same year that this book was published. So perhaps a lot of the grumpiness in his writing is due to how poorly he was feeling. If so, it feels a bit mean giving only 2 stars, but I feel I have to rate based on what I thought of the book, and not on the author's circumstances.
February 9, 2022
Environmentalist Kenneth Allsop's clear prose about his love of life in the countryside and bird-watching. Set mostly in Wessex
October 8, 2012
A very appealing premise, and Allsop clearly loved the place he wrote about, but it's hard to get on with his rather over-descriptive, flowery style.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews