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Country Boy
Richard Hillyer was the pseudonym used by Charles Stranks, a farmworker’s son who grew up in great poverty in a remote Buckinghamshire village in the years before the First World War. Country Boy describes how, against all the odds, he managed to educate himself and get to university. It is an extraordinary and moving story.
Hardwick (which Richard Hillyer calls Byfield) was a village virtually unchanged since Saxon times, where life moved to the rhythm of the seasons. The squire ruled the roost, and for families like the Hillyers, tied to the land and to the farmers who had owned it for many generations, there was no way out of poverty, no room for self-advancement. Boys like Richard left the village school at an early age and became labourers like their fathers.
Yet the snatches of literature he picked up in the classroom set this young boy’s imagination on fire. With battered volumes of Scott’s novels he had found thrown out for burning and books he managed to buy for a few pennies at a rundown market stall, he built up a small library. Among them were some textbooks, from which he taught himself Latin. When the Rector discovered this by chance, he could hardly believe it. It was he who helped Richard make his escape.
Country Boy is a touching and unforgettable book on many levels. Written with almost painful honesty but without bitterness, it is both an unsentimental picture of rural life in the early years of the last century, and a deeply poetic evocation of the unspoilt English countryside and its effect on the imagination of a sensitive boy. Above all it is a story of a fight against incredible odds which is totally absorbing to the end.
Hardwick (which Richard Hillyer calls Byfield) was a village virtually unchanged since Saxon times, where life moved to the rhythm of the seasons. The squire ruled the roost, and for families like the Hillyers, tied to the land and to the farmers who had owned it for many generations, there was no way out of poverty, no room for self-advancement. Boys like Richard left the village school at an early age and became labourers like their fathers.
Yet the snatches of literature he picked up in the classroom set this young boy’s imagination on fire. With battered volumes of Scott’s novels he had found thrown out for burning and books he managed to buy for a few pennies at a rundown market stall, he built up a small library. Among them were some textbooks, from which he taught himself Latin. When the Rector discovered this by chance, he could hardly believe it. It was he who helped Richard make his escape.
Country Boy is a touching and unforgettable book on many levels. Written with almost painful honesty but without bitterness, it is both an unsentimental picture of rural life in the early years of the last century, and a deeply poetic evocation of the unspoilt English countryside and its effect on the imagination of a sensitive boy. Above all it is a story of a fight against incredible odds which is totally absorbing to the end.
- GenresBiography
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 16, 2017
Lovely memoir of a boy struggling out of poverty and ignorance, reading as many books as he can find - in a place and time where there might be only one or two books in a household - teaching himself Latin, and desperately hoping to rise above the monotonous hardship of a farm laborer's life.
June 4, 2019
A memoir of a boy in the farming working class of pre-WWI England, and all that books meant to his intellectual and vocational awakening. Lovely.
"Some understanding of what life must have meant to a person like Mother began to come to me. She was sensitive to things, she had brains, courage, and all that; yet life had put her through the mangle. She had been squashed between the rollers of poverty and class. Class had ordained that she should be poor, poverty had seen to it that she should never escape from her class. I could see how nice it must be, to think that the poor are either fools or failures. They couldn't be bettered, so there was no need to try. Yet all the time, if people had only been willing to see what there was to see, they would have to admit that she had been heroic. She had got every scrap out of herself that life had let her get. Only by squeezing herself dry had she been able to survive as a real person, the sort of person she wanted to be." pg.180
"My Father, with his capacity for simple enjoyment, had been allowed next to nothing to enjoy. His easy, open nature which accepted everything that came, and contrived to wring some drops of satisfaction out of the harshest circumstances, had been chilled and limited in every direction. There was something wrong in a world that let that happen." pg.180-81
"Some understanding of what life must have meant to a person like Mother began to come to me. She was sensitive to things, she had brains, courage, and all that; yet life had put her through the mangle. She had been squashed between the rollers of poverty and class. Class had ordained that she should be poor, poverty had seen to it that she should never escape from her class. I could see how nice it must be, to think that the poor are either fools or failures. They couldn't be bettered, so there was no need to try. Yet all the time, if people had only been willing to see what there was to see, they would have to admit that she had been heroic. She had got every scrap out of herself that life had let her get. Only by squeezing herself dry had she been able to survive as a real person, the sort of person she wanted to be." pg.180
"My Father, with his capacity for simple enjoyment, had been allowed next to nothing to enjoy. His easy, open nature which accepted everything that came, and contrived to wring some drops of satisfaction out of the harshest circumstances, had been chilled and limited in every direction. There was something wrong in a world that let that happen." pg.180-81
February 6, 2019
An amazing story of how fete and luck lifted a poor country farm labouring boy into a world of learning and education through his own insatiable will to read and self educate.
It was also a most lyrical and beautiful evocation of English village country life before the Great Ear which as we know changed everything. I found the way the Industrial North at the time was contrasted with the Agricultural South extremely moving and sad and made one realise how ones family history is so shaped depending on where your forbears happened to live and work . A wonderful read .
It was also a most lyrical and beautiful evocation of English village country life before the Great Ear which as we know changed everything. I found the way the Industrial North at the time was contrasted with the Agricultural South extremely moving and sad and made one realise how ones family history is so shaped depending on where your forbears happened to live and work . A wonderful read .
October 6, 2025
Country Boy by Richard Hillyer is a quaint and charming book I picked up for a brief reprise from the chaos of my London life, lifting me in both mind and spirit back to my own countryside roots.
It was intriguing to discover many reminiscent synergies between my own life and the experiences outlined by the author in early 1900s Buckinghamshire. The first of which was the notion that those who dwell in small communities thrive on gossip. Anyone who breaks away from the repressive socially constructed norms, that have been crafted to secure a sense of safety through limiting nuance, is discussed disapprovingly to all those who will listen.
Secondly, the escape nature provides as an antidote to the boredom and repetition of country life is a theme explored in country boy which rings true to my own life. I discovered myself that the sweet songs of the birds, the deep-throated greetings from the cows, and the breeze of the wind as you trod along a coastal path provides a sense of euphoria, otherwise scarce in such quiet parts of the country.
Finally, for both myself and the author university offered the outstretched helping hand which lifted me out of my life in the country ending that chapter and opening a door to new experiences, new people, and new mindsets.
After reading Country Boy it is equally daunting and comforting that aspects of countryside life have not changed in a century. The book offers a testament to both the beauty of nature and community each found in their purest form in the countryside, while also conveying a solemn warning against the stagnation and shortened horizons of countryside life.
It was intriguing to discover many reminiscent synergies between my own life and the experiences outlined by the author in early 1900s Buckinghamshire. The first of which was the notion that those who dwell in small communities thrive on gossip. Anyone who breaks away from the repressive socially constructed norms, that have been crafted to secure a sense of safety through limiting nuance, is discussed disapprovingly to all those who will listen.
Secondly, the escape nature provides as an antidote to the boredom and repetition of country life is a theme explored in country boy which rings true to my own life. I discovered myself that the sweet songs of the birds, the deep-throated greetings from the cows, and the breeze of the wind as you trod along a coastal path provides a sense of euphoria, otherwise scarce in such quiet parts of the country.
Finally, for both myself and the author university offered the outstretched helping hand which lifted me out of my life in the country ending that chapter and opening a door to new experiences, new people, and new mindsets.
After reading Country Boy it is equally daunting and comforting that aspects of countryside life have not changed in a century. The book offers a testament to both the beauty of nature and community each found in their purest form in the countryside, while also conveying a solemn warning against the stagnation and shortened horizons of countryside life.
January 31, 2021
This book is a treasure. Sublimely written, almost poetic in its prose. It describes, like no other book I have read, what it is like to grow up dirt poor - in this case as a member of a family of very poor farm labourers in southern England just before the Great War - and all that that entails. What a gem. I would give it 10 stars if I could.
November 25, 2015
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. With their small size and brightly colored cloth covers, Slightly Foxed Editions resemble jewels in book form, a literary treasure chest. And here is treasure indeed. Each book contains a memoir of a singular individual, revealing many facets of human nature in all its richness and complexity. Most are reprints, revived from the archives of the past for a new generation of discerning readers. While some are attached to well-known names like Rosemary Sutcliff and Graham Greene, many are from authors who have lapsed into obscurity.
In the latter category is Country Boy, a moving yet supremely unsentimental account of a boy's life within an English farm laborer's family just over a century ago. Deep feeling and clear-eyed observation merge to create a memorable, distinct picture of that vanished world and of the brave, struggling souls who inhabited it. The country life is neither idealized as a pastoral Arcadia, nor demonized as a hotbed of vice and squalor, as certain novelists would have it. Both the beauty and the drawbacks of traditional rural life are described in calm, quiet prose that brings a place and people vividly before us, with few judgments but many telling details.
Most memorable to me were the passages in which the author describes his longing for something different, a way into the wider world revealed to him by the scraps of literature he was able to pick up within his severely limited existence. How he treasured and sought and ultimately used these to grow into something more than the fate he was born to forms a narrative as gripping as that as any novel. For those of us who value reading above nearly all other pleasures and benefits of life, he articulates experiences and feelings that we can share no matter what the circumstances of our birth or upbringing.
In the latter category is Country Boy, a moving yet supremely unsentimental account of a boy's life within an English farm laborer's family just over a century ago. Deep feeling and clear-eyed observation merge to create a memorable, distinct picture of that vanished world and of the brave, struggling souls who inhabited it. The country life is neither idealized as a pastoral Arcadia, nor demonized as a hotbed of vice and squalor, as certain novelists would have it. Both the beauty and the drawbacks of traditional rural life are described in calm, quiet prose that brings a place and people vividly before us, with few judgments but many telling details.
Most memorable to me were the passages in which the author describes his longing for something different, a way into the wider world revealed to him by the scraps of literature he was able to pick up within his severely limited existence. How he treasured and sought and ultimately used these to grow into something more than the fate he was born to forms a narrative as gripping as that as any novel. For those of us who value reading above nearly all other pleasures and benefits of life, he articulates experiences and feelings that we can share no matter what the circumstances of our birth or upbringing.
November 4, 2022
This is the first realistic memoir of growing up in the countryside in either the Victorian era or early 1900s that I have read. Even the memoirs that are full of detail are romanticised nostalgia. I love this book’s simple, earthy and articulate narrative.
He is a smooth writer, yet his story is not a collection of poetically expressed, remembered through rose tinted spectacles, oh so fond, memories of the past, like every single other memoir I have ever read. This book is unique. It’s harsh reality and told in great detail.
I dip into this book again and again. It’s such a good read precisely because it’s not nostalgic: it’s grounded in reality and not detached from it, like so many other such memoirs, that, ironically, paint no picture of the past whatsoever and create no sense of time and place, because they are too dreamy and romanticised and unrealistiic.
Even Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise memoir, from her 1880s childhood, while choc full of detail from daily life and an excellent book, is dreamy and romanticised and does not paint a realistic portrait of the past. Although for detail it is good.
If you want to understand what country life was like at the turn of the 1900s, read this, not Thomas Hardy’s novels, at least one of which was set just 30 or so years earlier. This is an outstanding book.
He is a smooth writer, yet his story is not a collection of poetically expressed, remembered through rose tinted spectacles, oh so fond, memories of the past, like every single other memoir I have ever read. This book is unique. It’s harsh reality and told in great detail.
I dip into this book again and again. It’s such a good read precisely because it’s not nostalgic: it’s grounded in reality and not detached from it, like so many other such memoirs, that, ironically, paint no picture of the past whatsoever and create no sense of time and place, because they are too dreamy and romanticised and unrealistiic.
Even Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise memoir, from her 1880s childhood, while choc full of detail from daily life and an excellent book, is dreamy and romanticised and does not paint a realistic portrait of the past. Although for detail it is good.
If you want to understand what country life was like at the turn of the 1900s, read this, not Thomas Hardy’s novels, at least one of which was set just 30 or so years earlier. This is an outstanding book.
October 18, 2014
Hillyer (a pseudonym for Charles James Strank) depicts his youth in a rural community and manages to balance scenes of great joy and promise with the often overwhelming sense of hopelessness he saw in his parents and felt for himself. Determination and self-education saved him. Educated in what? Latin. If you like Dickens, here's the real thing, although not in the city. Hillyer's feelings about his own lot compared with the urban poor? He considered himself and his fellow villagers lucky compared to them.
January 1, 2016
This was my treat from my friend Nancy, who always sends me a memoir in a "Slightly Foxed" edition for Christmas. Old-fashioned, pocket sized hardbacks with a bookmark integral to the binding, I read them straight away and they always transport me to another era. Country Boy is a beautifully written and unsentimental evocation of life in an English village before WW1, but so many of his observations I could still recognise from my childhood in the 60s ie the difference between Chapel, we had a small brick methodist chapel and church.
October 20, 2013
Slightly Foxed have made a name for reissuing these type of books...memoirs of people living long (and not so long) ago. This follows the same pattern and is essentially a variation on Cider With Rosie. That's not to say it isn't enjoyable...this is a good example of the genre. I hope that they do try and diversify in the future mind you...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews