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Through the Woods
H.E. Bates's evocation of a year in the life of an English woodland has been reprinted to make a suitable gift for gardeners and nature lovers. Bates has an eye for every detail describing the sights and sounds of the countryside and the endless variety of plants and animals as each emerges in turn with the changing seasons.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
About the author
H.E. Bates
278 books195 followersHerbert Ernest Bates, CBE is widely recognised as one of the finest short story writers of his generation, with more than 20 story collections published in his lifetime. It should not be overlooked, however, that he also wrote some outstanding novels, starting with The Two Sisters through to A Moment in Time, with such works as Love For Lydia, Fair Stood the Wind for France and The Scarlet Sword earning high praise from the critics. His study of the Modern Short Story is considered one of the best ever written on the subject.
He was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he was briefly a newspaper reporter and a warehouse clerk, but his heart was always in writing and his dream to be able to make a living by his pen.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long midnight walks around the Northamptonshire countryside - and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and its people and this is exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River.
In 1931, he married Madge Cox, his sweetheart from the next road in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. It was in this phase of his life that he found the inspiration for the Larkins series of novels -The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, When the Green Woods Laugh, etc. - and the Uncle Silas tales. Not surprisingly, these highly successful novels inspired television series that were immensely popular.
His collection of stories written while serving in the RAF during World War II, best known by the title The Stories of Flying Officer X, but previously published as Something in the Air (a compilation of his two wartime collections under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X' and titled The Greatest People in the World and How Sleep the Brave), deserve particular attention. By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Squadron Leader.
Bates was influenced by Chekhov in particular, and his knowledge of the history of the short story is obvious from the famous study he produced on the subject. He also wrote his autobiography in three volumes (each delightfully illustrated) which were subsequently published in a one-volume Autobiography.
Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener and wrote numerous books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life. After the death of H. E Bates, Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at age 95. They raised two sons and two daughters.
primarily from Wikipedia, with additions by Keith Farnsworth
He was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he was briefly a newspaper reporter and a warehouse clerk, but his heart was always in writing and his dream to be able to make a living by his pen.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long midnight walks around the Northamptonshire countryside - and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and its people and this is exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River.
In 1931, he married Madge Cox, his sweetheart from the next road in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. It was in this phase of his life that he found the inspiration for the Larkins series of novels -The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, When the Green Woods Laugh, etc. - and the Uncle Silas tales. Not surprisingly, these highly successful novels inspired television series that were immensely popular.
His collection of stories written while serving in the RAF during World War II, best known by the title The Stories of Flying Officer X, but previously published as Something in the Air (a compilation of his two wartime collections under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X' and titled The Greatest People in the World and How Sleep the Brave), deserve particular attention. By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Squadron Leader.
Bates was influenced by Chekhov in particular, and his knowledge of the history of the short story is obvious from the famous study he produced on the subject. He also wrote his autobiography in three volumes (each delightfully illustrated) which were subsequently published in a one-volume Autobiography.
Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener and wrote numerous books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life. After the death of H. E Bates, Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at age 95. They raised two sons and two daughters.
primarily from Wikipedia, with additions by Keith Farnsworth
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 10, 2016
3.5 or 4*? I must think on it a while. (Sometimes I even consider 5.)
"The wood is not far from the house. You can see it, in fact, from the windows. We might as well go straight to it."
Those are the first lines of "Through the Woods" - and as they say, "He had me at hello".
Reasons this book is amazing:
1)Love and time. Every word B. writes is steeped in love for trees, flowers, birds, seasons, smells - all of nature, and he has spent his life observing and appreciating the little details that surround him.
2)He is incredibly knowledgeable and articulate. You might expect this of a botanist, but in B's case it's simply born of deep interest and close attention.
3)The wood engravings of Agnes Miller Parker. I can't tell you how beautiful they are - you'll just have to see them for yourself. I think every nature book should have accompanying illustrative art (and not just photography, although that can be very good - but drawings or paintings add a level of interest and interpretation that should not be underestimated).
4)Superb writing.
5)Did I mention love? Love. I know it when I read it.
For a North American reader, the idea of a gamekeeper (something that comes up often in Bates' writing) is strange. The fact that most (or all?) of the woods in England are owned by someone - somebody very rich or titled or something! and are off-limits to everyone else, and are (or were - my knowledge is limited on this subject) guarded by gamekeepers (and there's a whole history to this - think Robin Hood) this seems incredible to someone like myself. Certainly we don't trespass on other people's property here in Canada, but there is so much Crown Land and wilderness yet that we think nothing of stepping into most woods - that is, we don't think about being chased out by people. Bears, maybe, cougars quite likely - and wolves? - more likely. But that's a different feeling altogether. And that's another point - these woods B. writes about, they are full of such a variety of trees and a profusion of flowers - and so little wildlife. I mean by comparison. It's interesting to me. I obviously don't get the sense of wildness, of isolation that the "woods" (or as we call it, "the bush") gives one here. This is not a criticism, I merely note the difference.
Bates' woods seem garden-like to me. And his writing adds to that feeling. He writes through the seasons, the first flowers and birds, the changes in the forest. Nature writing is not easily done, it is very difficult to engage the reader in something that amounts to pure description - but Bates is masterful. It's not for everyone, there were times when my mind wandered, I won't deny it. But the invitation to slow down and pay attention, to meditate almost, to watch and appreciate the unfolding of the season in it's bewildering generosity of forms - this is a summons I don't ever want to deny.
About Autumn:
"We talk of the height of summer, the dead of Winter, the fullness of spring. But Autumn reaches a heart, a core of fruitfulness and decline, that has in it the sweet dregs of the year. Under the quiet skies the woods stand now with a kind of contradictory magnificence: gaudy and smouldering, flaring and almost arrogant, the stain of yellow and bronze spreading and deepening among the green, the copper flames of beeches firing whole sections of the woods with stationary heatless fires that look perpetual. Even the green is now burning. It has the yellow of flame in it. It bears some relation to the green flames of fires on nights of frost. And when frost comes now, it is paradoxically not ot extinguish or lessen these vast flames of leaf, but to sting them into a finer richness and fierceness."
The Coming of Winter:
"The beating of the wind and rain against the woods makes a grand sea-sound somehow appropriate to the almost catastrophic change it brings: the fierce baring of boughs, the mighty herding up of leaves, the whole cyclonic cleansing away of the remnants of death. In a single day or night the woods are changes beyond recognition. There is a sudden letting in of light. Frost has rotted the stitches of the canopy of leaves, but not irrevocably. They still cling there, the oaks especially, with a pretense of permanence. The storm tears them out completely, lashes them into nothingness, annihilates the whole fabric of them. They are driven away like clouds of multitudinous small birds, in whirlwinds and swooping flocks in air and in rolling and spinning and somersaulting crowds along the earth. And with them are driven away the sweetish damp death-odours of autumn itself. the air is whipped into a rain-freshness, a new clear coldness, the first touch of winter that is as exhilarating as spring."
On Snow:
"There is no stillness in the world like the stillness of the world under snow. The stillness of summer is made up in effect of sounds, of many little drowsy sounds like the warm monotonous moan of pigeons, the changeless tune of invisible yellowhammers, the dreamy fluttering of thivk leaves, sounds which altogether send the air half to sleep and create that singing silence which is almost a tangible thing in the heart of warm summer afternoons.
But the silence of snow is absolute; the silence of death and suspense. It is as though the snow has a paralyzing effect, deadening the wind, freezing the voices of the birds. It is a silence which is absolutely complete in itself; not an illusion like the summer silence, not made up of sounds somnolently repeated. It is pure tranquillity and soundlessness, profoundest and most wonderful when the snow has finally ceased; full of expectancy and broken by the occasional uneasy cries of rooks when snow still has to come. And the fall of snow on snow, through the silence of snow, is the perfection of beauty: a lovely paradox of silence and movement, of stillness and life, the twinkling and fluttering and dancing of the new snow against the old."
(He even spends a chapter describing the different shapes of tree buds - something I haven't come across before.)
And the words that sum it up:
"There is some precious quality brought about by the close gathering of trees into a wood that defies analysis. The mere planting together of trees will not create it. An avenue will not do it, nor a park, nor an orchard. There must, it seems, be a closeness, an untidiness, a wildness."
"The wood is not far from the house. You can see it, in fact, from the windows. We might as well go straight to it."
Those are the first lines of "Through the Woods" - and as they say, "He had me at hello".
Reasons this book is amazing:
1)Love and time. Every word B. writes is steeped in love for trees, flowers, birds, seasons, smells - all of nature, and he has spent his life observing and appreciating the little details that surround him.
2)He is incredibly knowledgeable and articulate. You might expect this of a botanist, but in B's case it's simply born of deep interest and close attention.
3)The wood engravings of Agnes Miller Parker. I can't tell you how beautiful they are - you'll just have to see them for yourself. I think every nature book should have accompanying illustrative art (and not just photography, although that can be very good - but drawings or paintings add a level of interest and interpretation that should not be underestimated).
4)Superb writing.
5)Did I mention love? Love. I know it when I read it.
For a North American reader, the idea of a gamekeeper (something that comes up often in Bates' writing) is strange. The fact that most (or all?) of the woods in England are owned by someone - somebody very rich or titled or something! and are off-limits to everyone else, and are (or were - my knowledge is limited on this subject) guarded by gamekeepers (and there's a whole history to this - think Robin Hood) this seems incredible to someone like myself. Certainly we don't trespass on other people's property here in Canada, but there is so much Crown Land and wilderness yet that we think nothing of stepping into most woods - that is, we don't think about being chased out by people. Bears, maybe, cougars quite likely - and wolves? - more likely. But that's a different feeling altogether. And that's another point - these woods B. writes about, they are full of such a variety of trees and a profusion of flowers - and so little wildlife. I mean by comparison. It's interesting to me. I obviously don't get the sense of wildness, of isolation that the "woods" (or as we call it, "the bush") gives one here. This is not a criticism, I merely note the difference.
Bates' woods seem garden-like to me. And his writing adds to that feeling. He writes through the seasons, the first flowers and birds, the changes in the forest. Nature writing is not easily done, it is very difficult to engage the reader in something that amounts to pure description - but Bates is masterful. It's not for everyone, there were times when my mind wandered, I won't deny it. But the invitation to slow down and pay attention, to meditate almost, to watch and appreciate the unfolding of the season in it's bewildering generosity of forms - this is a summons I don't ever want to deny.
About Autumn:
"We talk of the height of summer, the dead of Winter, the fullness of spring. But Autumn reaches a heart, a core of fruitfulness and decline, that has in it the sweet dregs of the year. Under the quiet skies the woods stand now with a kind of contradictory magnificence: gaudy and smouldering, flaring and almost arrogant, the stain of yellow and bronze spreading and deepening among the green, the copper flames of beeches firing whole sections of the woods with stationary heatless fires that look perpetual. Even the green is now burning. It has the yellow of flame in it. It bears some relation to the green flames of fires on nights of frost. And when frost comes now, it is paradoxically not ot extinguish or lessen these vast flames of leaf, but to sting them into a finer richness and fierceness."
The Coming of Winter:
"The beating of the wind and rain against the woods makes a grand sea-sound somehow appropriate to the almost catastrophic change it brings: the fierce baring of boughs, the mighty herding up of leaves, the whole cyclonic cleansing away of the remnants of death. In a single day or night the woods are changes beyond recognition. There is a sudden letting in of light. Frost has rotted the stitches of the canopy of leaves, but not irrevocably. They still cling there, the oaks especially, with a pretense of permanence. The storm tears them out completely, lashes them into nothingness, annihilates the whole fabric of them. They are driven away like clouds of multitudinous small birds, in whirlwinds and swooping flocks in air and in rolling and spinning and somersaulting crowds along the earth. And with them are driven away the sweetish damp death-odours of autumn itself. the air is whipped into a rain-freshness, a new clear coldness, the first touch of winter that is as exhilarating as spring."
On Snow:
"There is no stillness in the world like the stillness of the world under snow. The stillness of summer is made up in effect of sounds, of many little drowsy sounds like the warm monotonous moan of pigeons, the changeless tune of invisible yellowhammers, the dreamy fluttering of thivk leaves, sounds which altogether send the air half to sleep and create that singing silence which is almost a tangible thing in the heart of warm summer afternoons.
But the silence of snow is absolute; the silence of death and suspense. It is as though the snow has a paralyzing effect, deadening the wind, freezing the voices of the birds. It is a silence which is absolutely complete in itself; not an illusion like the summer silence, not made up of sounds somnolently repeated. It is pure tranquillity and soundlessness, profoundest and most wonderful when the snow has finally ceased; full of expectancy and broken by the occasional uneasy cries of rooks when snow still has to come. And the fall of snow on snow, through the silence of snow, is the perfection of beauty: a lovely paradox of silence and movement, of stillness and life, the twinkling and fluttering and dancing of the new snow against the old."
(He even spends a chapter describing the different shapes of tree buds - something I haven't come across before.)
And the words that sum it up:
"There is some precious quality brought about by the close gathering of trees into a wood that defies analysis. The mere planting together of trees will not create it. An avenue will not do it, nor a park, nor an orchard. There must, it seems, be a closeness, an untidiness, a wildness."
August 4, 2013
On the surface of it, this book looks like a conventional account of English woodlands throughout the course of a year. The book begins with a chapter called “The Wood in April” and end with one called “The Circle has Turned”, even the subtitle of the book is “The English Woodland –April to April”.
But to approach this book on the basis of this description would miss some key, maybe even central ideas, about this book.
While the book does adopt a familiar chronological structure, this seems only to be a convenient structure on which to hang a more astute examination on how woodlands impact on us – and to a lesser extent how we impact on them.
Much of the book is really about the “woodland of the mind” – the remembered and imagined woodland of childhood and a desire to return to them. Although the author admits that this is not possible, because both the woodland and the child have changed.
This book is by turns, gentle, detailed and occasionally passionate. The extremes of passion are directed at a Game Keeper (or Under Keeper) that Bates encounters on a number of occasions. He does not hold back in telling us exactly what he thinks of this person.
All in all, this is a book I would recommend rather highly.
But to approach this book on the basis of this description would miss some key, maybe even central ideas, about this book.
While the book does adopt a familiar chronological structure, this seems only to be a convenient structure on which to hang a more astute examination on how woodlands impact on us – and to a lesser extent how we impact on them.
Much of the book is really about the “woodland of the mind” – the remembered and imagined woodland of childhood and a desire to return to them. Although the author admits that this is not possible, because both the woodland and the child have changed.
This book is by turns, gentle, detailed and occasionally passionate. The extremes of passion are directed at a Game Keeper (or Under Keeper) that Bates encounters on a number of occasions. He does not hold back in telling us exactly what he thinks of this person.
All in all, this is a book I would recommend rather highly.
December 21, 2020
What a beautiful read through a world now increasingly under threat. The small wood - copse - in England, home to such a diverse ecosystem that relies on the huge variety of different trees and plants for the animals, insects and birds to survive. Bates' writing style is rich, poetic and powerful. He follows the story of a little wood near his home through the changing seasons of one year. At the same time he moves backwards into his childhood for fascinating memories of growing up in an almost gone world. His descriptions of altercations with gamekeepers protecting the ubiquitous pheasant for upper class shooting, are funny but at times violent. His sympathy obviously lies with the poachers.
This book is full of beautiful engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. My copy is a new Little Toller Book edition and it is glorious.
This book is full of beautiful engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. My copy is a new Little Toller Book edition and it is glorious.
September 28, 2013
It was the Little Toller imprint that drew me to this book by HE Bates, and illustrated by the engraver Agnes Miller Parker. The choice of writer for the introduction of someone intimate with the too-little known Salcey Forest close to Bates' origin was excellent.
This book however, although I enjoyed it, didn't inspire the passionate joy of the others I've read so far from Little Toller. Bates', famous for that fictional celebration of rural life The Darling Buds of May, writes like man set homework, for all the close and original observation and the intensity of emotion on occasion, such as when writing of his hatred of gamekeepers and the shoot.
The illustrations went well with the words - in a negative as well as positive sense, beautiful and yet a little too dark.
This book however, although I enjoyed it, didn't inspire the passionate joy of the others I've read so far from Little Toller. Bates', famous for that fictional celebration of rural life The Darling Buds of May, writes like man set homework, for all the close and original observation and the intensity of emotion on occasion, such as when writing of his hatred of gamekeepers and the shoot.
The illustrations went well with the words - in a negative as well as positive sense, beautiful and yet a little too dark.
August 30, 2021
Something sp somple as walk in woods becomes extravagant delight. Bates has amazing knowledge of botany, animal life . All told in simple, comprehensible prose Delightful read.
November 13, 2021
Fantastic nature writing from H E Bates. I could imagine walking alongside through the mixed woodlands he describes, so evocative were his descriptions.
I love his admitted hatred of gamekeepers! He had me laughing describing his run-ins with the "harbingers of death" who think they own every public right of way and love nothing more than escorting members of the public off the land! I love Bates's indignation at the exchanges with these red-faced, angry little men of wanton killing. I felt like I had found a kindred hunt hater.
Bates writes a simple format of April to April through the changing shape, feel, smell and sight of local woodlands. It works superbly, and I loved it.
I love his admitted hatred of gamekeepers! He had me laughing describing his run-ins with the "harbingers of death" who think they own every public right of way and love nothing more than escorting members of the public off the land! I love Bates's indignation at the exchanges with these red-faced, angry little men of wanton killing. I felt like I had found a kindred hunt hater.
Bates writes a simple format of April to April through the changing shape, feel, smell and sight of local woodlands. It works superbly, and I loved it.
March 8, 2015
The author paints a picture in woods of a year in an English woodlands running from April to the start of the following April prior to the Second World War.
October 10, 2020
I blogged my thoughts on this book here: https://wp.me/pc0a8G-vg
January 5, 2015
By H.E.Bates not Agnes Miller Parker as Goodreads will have you believe. As you'd expect from any Bates book, his descriptions of the countryside that surrounded him, it's flower and fauna, are beautifully descriptive. We know he was a man who loved nature and was a keen gardener so some of his descriptions of flowers and trees, even down to their buds, are incredibly poetic. A lovely book.
January 19, 2019
I picked this one up for the PopSugar reading challenge of “two books with the same name “. This was lovely and evocative and very different from anything I’d normally pick up
April 12, 2020
Excellent!
December 29, 2024
A beautiful book full of keen observation. Interesting how things have sadly changed since the writing of this book; birds which were all too common to Bates have now all but vanished, wooodlands brimming with butterfly orchids...we now see them growing only sparcely on chalk downlands.
Definitely a book which deserves a second reading due to the sense of atmosphere it creates and the evocative imagery and attention to detail it employs. The engravings by Agnes Miller Parker which illustrate this book are also beautiful.
Definitely a book which deserves a second reading due to the sense of atmosphere it creates and the evocative imagery and attention to detail it employs. The engravings by Agnes Miller Parker which illustrate this book are also beautiful.
March 1, 2024
A beautiful account of the woods as the seasons change and bring their influences. I liked to dip in and out as I progressed through it, rather than read all of it in one go, and consequently found it was almost therapeutic to my thoughts when I needed my mind to encounter pleasant reflections and descriptions.
September 1, 2025
One of the best books on nature than I have read. Such beautiful prose - mastery demonstrated of the written word - as H E remembers the woodlands of his past and celebrates them.
January 26, 2024
Very detailed and well observed description of the passage of the year in a woodland in the last century. It covers plants, trees, birds and animals although the section on the hunt may not be to modern tastes.
June 7, 2018
The illustrations are wonderful... The words you can keep. Over the top florid language, that's poor at description, both repetitive and full of holes. Not one I'll keep, read again or ever recommend.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews