Young Phillip Maddison

A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight #3

by Henry Williamson

Now at secondary school, Phillip is trying to maintain a low profile and hide his secret passion for Helena Rolls from the mirth of his sisters. With the growth of his absorbing interest in natural history, he finds sanctuary, both from them and from the harshness of his father, on the heath.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Henry William Williamson was an English soldier, naturalist, farmer and ruralist writer known for his natural history and social history novels, as well as for his fascist sympathies. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter.

Henry Williamson is best known for a tetralogy of four novels which consists of The Beautiful Years (1921), Dandelion Days (1922), The Dream of Fair Women (1924) and The Pathway (1928). These novels are collectively known as The Flax of Dream and they follow the life of Willie Maddison from boyhood to adulthood in a rapidly changing world.

Reviews

[Paul Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A boy's difficult passage into youth
(The naughtiest boy in London, to tell the truth).
The Edwardian era's ending,
And Europe's demise impending;
Can Phillip grasp the nettle, in play or sooth?

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Williamson. His powers of description are such, that for me I was reduced to tears. It was not a dramatic or pathetic or remotely sad passage, merely the description of a journey. London to Lynmouth, Devon.
With simple words he drew a picture of such ravishing power. It's as if bent over his typewriter those many years ago, he toiled pouring so much energy into every syllable that the act of reading discharged the passion and emotion back to me.
Try him. If you love nature, English nature in particular you have found the richest of seams

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

And so continues my slow, but steady, journey through Williamson's Chronicles of Ancient Sunlight series (included in Anthony Burgess's 99 best novels since 1945). Williamson is a wonderful writer, particularly about nature, and has written extensively about it (most notably in Tarka the Otter perhaps, but he wrote many, many other books) and this series shares that virtue. Williamson's politics were problematic (admiration for Hitler, long standing friendship with Oswald Mosley) and he writes VERY deliberately, but overall, I believe I'm in for the long haul.

[PAUL DEWSON · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent book in the chronicle of ancient sunlight series. Here Williamson is at his best when he writes about the subject he loves most, nature and the countryside. We follow Phillip Maddison through his teens in an idyllic world of Scouting, bird watching and during a bad winter sledging. A world that was already starting to change environmentally and socially and was but a few months away from the horrors of The Great War.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I preferred this to Donkey Boy. It had fewer sentimental reflections on childhood innocence and more of what Williamson does best; nature writing. Philip explores the Kent countryside and his love of nature starts to blossom. There is also more room for sympathetic characterisation of Philip's father than in the previous novel. An interesting insight into early 20th century life for a struggling middle class family in South London.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third out of 15 novels in Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. This follows Phillip to school in 1890's. Beautiful descriptions of a country and countryside disappearing under industrialisation, there are hints of "this sceptered isle" but it's not all rose-tinted.