KENT

by Richard Church

289p green cloth with gilt lettering, pages clean and unmarked, binding firm, many b&w plates and a fold-out map, very good

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Richard Thomas Church CBE (26 March 1893 – 4 March 1972) was an English writer, poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three volumes of autobiography.

He had a great love for the Kent countryside and this is reflected in much of his writing. He published an anthology of works on Kent.

He lived at The Priest's House at Sissinghurst Castle in Cranbrook.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is best understood as an aspect of autobiography. It is certainly not a tour guide. Richard Church was a poet and man of letters who was born in south London but lived in Kent. He used the device of a journey around the county to reflect on history, literature and what he perceived as the virtues and vices of modern life ('modern' being the late 1940s). There are many flaws in the book - the references to the celebrated hop-pickers are a disgrace - but there are also many passages of charm and lyricism.

As a Kentish Man, I have loved reading Church's interpretation of places with which I am familiar and so, for all its outdated ideas and rather mannered approach, this is a book to which I have turned with pleasure many times.

[John Newcomb · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read up to page 55 which was about as far as I could manage. I started reading this book from a historical perspective to see if I could find out something new or interesting about the county that I have lived in for most of my life. Richard Church was a poet and novelist. This is a post-war book (with the necessary post-war rationing notice) from a series each devoted to a different county. Church was born in Battersea, but went to Dulwich school and claimed to love Kent. He didn't he loved a fantasised rural ideal of Kent that never existed. He is harshly critical and dismissive of anything built from around 1900; condemns the spread of London into Eltham, Bromley and Bexley; deplores all industry (despite Kent having been industrialized since the middle ages; and is a unapologetic snob, name dropping his links with the wealthy owners of manor houses and the landed gentry whilst being completely dismissive of the great, working majority of the population. The pretentiousness could be forgiven as an attitude of the times and he shares a long literary tradition of idealising the countryside that runs back to Virgil although was generally out of date by the turn of the 20th Century. What cannot be forgiven are the factual inaccuracies and the ignorance of some of the assertions that are simply untrue. The occasional mistake can be overlooked but the first 50 pages are littered with inconsistencies and falsehoods that can only be attributed to lack of research and ignorance. The book has no value whatsoever. I cannot waste any more of my life on it, despite usually persevering with a book once started, however poor.