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Changing Forest: Life in the Forest of Dean Today
Dennis Potter was born and brought up in the Forest of Dean- a 'strange and beautiful place', as he described it in the last interview before his death, 'rather ugly villages in beautiful landscape, a heart- shaped place between two rivers, somehow slightly cut off from the rest of England... with a people as warm as anywhere else, but they seemed warmer to me.' It was a childhood which informed all his television work, from his first documentary to such classic dramas as The Singing Detective.The Changing Forest, first published in 1962, is Potter's deeply personal study of that small area- its people, traditions, ceremonies and institutions- at a time of profound cultural and social change in the late 1950s and early '60s. With extraordinary precision and feeling he describes the fabric of a world whose old ways are yielding to the habits altering; expectations growing; work, leisure, language itself changing under the impact of the new television, of commercial jingles and the early Elvis. And, with powerful sympathy and wit, he asks whether the gains of modernity have, for the individuals and society he so marvellously evokes, been worth the loss.Part autobiography of one of this century's greatest writers, part elegy for a vanishing way of life, part testament to the abiding humanity that underlies all Potter's work, this exquisite, passionate and brillinat book is a classic of its kind.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 1996
1 person is currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Potter
61 books35 followersDennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective (1986). His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture. Such was his reputation that he convinced BBC 2 and Channel 4 to co-operate in screening his final two works, written in the months he was aware of his impending death.
Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.
Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work.
Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials with Pennies from Heaven (1978), which featured Bob Hoskins as a sheet music salesman and was Hoskins's first performance to receive wide attention. It demonstrated the dramatic possibilities old recordings of popular songs. Blue Remembered Hills was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979; it returned to the British small screen at Christmas 2004, and again in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970s) having been voted by BBC Four viewers as the golden era of British television. The adult actors playing the roles of children were Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, and Robin Ellis. It was directed by Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was "the child is father of the man". Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, for example in Stand Up, Nigel Barton.
The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.
His final two serials were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (two related stories, both starring Albert Finney as the same principal character, one set in the present and the other in the far future).
Potter's work is distinctive for its use of non-naturalistic devices. The 'lip-sync' technique he developed for his "serials with songs" (Pennies
Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.
Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work.
Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials with Pennies from Heaven (1978), which featured Bob Hoskins as a sheet music salesman and was Hoskins's first performance to receive wide attention. It demonstrated the dramatic possibilities old recordings of popular songs. Blue Remembered Hills was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979; it returned to the British small screen at Christmas 2004, and again in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970s) having been voted by BBC Four viewers as the golden era of British television. The adult actors playing the roles of children were Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, and Robin Ellis. It was directed by Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was "the child is father of the man". Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, for example in Stand Up, Nigel Barton.
The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.
His final two serials were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (two related stories, both starring Albert Finney as the same principal character, one set in the present and the other in the far future).
Potter's work is distinctive for its use of non-naturalistic devices. The 'lip-sync' technique he developed for his "serials with songs" (Pennies
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 1, 2020
I read The Changing Forest while travelling around the Forest of Dean with my father, who grew up in and around Mitcheldean in the same period Potter describes in this travelogue-cum-memoir published in 1961. It's clear from the way both of them feel about their home region that the Forest of Dean had an exceptionally strong sense of identity and, in their eyes at least, a culture that was quite distinct from the rest of England (and Wales) in the 1950s. To take just one example, Potter mentions that many Foresters spoke a dialect of English that used old Germanic conjugation structures such as 'bist thou'.
Unfortunately, Potter is a rambling and idiosyncratic guide to his subject. He assumes that the reader already has detailed knowledge of the region and we get very little history or context to make sense of his observations regarding the way life was changing in the Forest in the wake of various technological, social and economic developments. Even more problematically, his 'field research' seems to have largely consisted of sitting in the pub and talking to whoever happened to walked through the door- effectively excluding, amongst many others, a female perspective on life in the Forest (while he mentions how repressed women must have been in the Forest, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him to actually ask them about it).
Nevertheless, this book offers up a lot of fascinating titbits with surprising relevance to modern British politics. As early as 1961, Potter could see evidence of old mining communities moving towards the Conservatives as a reaction against the stagnant local Labour political establishment. He discusses the resentment many old miners felt towards the government's nationalisation of the coal industry, which did little to improve working conditions or job opportunities. Indeed, many felt miserably exploited by their government employers who claimed that the miners were heroes of the nation, yet regularly made callous and inhumane operational decisions based on ruthless economic and strategic logic.
The Forest's miners also faced a growing identity crisis as the institutions they had known all their lives began to falter. Younger generations implicitly rejected the institutions around which local life had traditionally been organised: the local chapel, the neighbourhood brass band and the rugby team. As mines shed workers, factories swooped in to the area with jobs that, in most cases, did not offer anywhere near the autonomy or sense of self-worth men got from work in the coal fields. In what I found the most vivid story in the book, Potter describes how he met three brothers proudly worked as independent Freeminers operating their own small drift mine. This tradition, apparently unique to the Forest, effectively met its end in the 1960s; the ultimate symbol of the region's loss of dignity.
Throughout the book, Potter makes it clear that he thinks a better path could have been found through this transition. Anticipating Robert Putnam's work on the importance of social capital in community building, he attacks television and mass market commerce for hollowing out the old institutions of working class life. Of course, few would argue that these forces have contributed to the atomisation of contemporary life, but it's not clear what the alternative option was. Aside from perpetuating a level of cultural isolationism unimaginable in a country like the UK, sudden social change in the Forest was inevitable, and for many young people, extremely welcome.
Unfortunately, Potter is a rambling and idiosyncratic guide to his subject. He assumes that the reader already has detailed knowledge of the region and we get very little history or context to make sense of his observations regarding the way life was changing in the Forest in the wake of various technological, social and economic developments. Even more problematically, his 'field research' seems to have largely consisted of sitting in the pub and talking to whoever happened to walked through the door- effectively excluding, amongst many others, a female perspective on life in the Forest (while he mentions how repressed women must have been in the Forest, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him to actually ask them about it).
Nevertheless, this book offers up a lot of fascinating titbits with surprising relevance to modern British politics. As early as 1961, Potter could see evidence of old mining communities moving towards the Conservatives as a reaction against the stagnant local Labour political establishment. He discusses the resentment many old miners felt towards the government's nationalisation of the coal industry, which did little to improve working conditions or job opportunities. Indeed, many felt miserably exploited by their government employers who claimed that the miners were heroes of the nation, yet regularly made callous and inhumane operational decisions based on ruthless economic and strategic logic.
The Forest's miners also faced a growing identity crisis as the institutions they had known all their lives began to falter. Younger generations implicitly rejected the institutions around which local life had traditionally been organised: the local chapel, the neighbourhood brass band and the rugby team. As mines shed workers, factories swooped in to the area with jobs that, in most cases, did not offer anywhere near the autonomy or sense of self-worth men got from work in the coal fields. In what I found the most vivid story in the book, Potter describes how he met three brothers proudly worked as independent Freeminers operating their own small drift mine. This tradition, apparently unique to the Forest, effectively met its end in the 1960s; the ultimate symbol of the region's loss of dignity.
Throughout the book, Potter makes it clear that he thinks a better path could have been found through this transition. Anticipating Robert Putnam's work on the importance of social capital in community building, he attacks television and mass market commerce for hollowing out the old institutions of working class life. Of course, few would argue that these forces have contributed to the atomisation of contemporary life, but it's not clear what the alternative option was. Aside from perpetuating a level of cultural isolationism unimaginable in a country like the UK, sudden social change in the Forest was inevitable, and for many young people, extremely welcome.
February 20, 2022
"...the past not only bends their backs and callouses their hands, but moves heavily in their minds, their limbs and their whole language..."
This book is a unique snapshot of a specific part of England, at a specific time in history. My dad is from the Forest (in fact, he grew up in the same village as Dennis Potter) and the vivid descriptions of the culture and people of that area in the 1960's gave me a fascinating glimpse into his childhood. Many of the themes - gentrification, cultural clashes between older and younger generations, the shift towards the political right in working class communities - feel startingly relevant even 60 years after the book was written. Potter is a wonderful writer, managing to capture the beauty and whimsy of the Forest whilst staying firmly down to earth, and his deep affection for the people of this region bleeds through every description.
Now, for the elements I found less satisfying: Potter claims to reject nostalgia, but his fondness for the old traditions and ways of life in the Forest borders on sentimentality. When describing the shift towards more modern sensibilities in the young people there, he focuses mainly on the negatives - commercialism, loss of regional character, the economic impact of pit closures - with only brief mention of the benefits, in terms of changing attitudes towards women and 'outsiders', and the enormous risk of injury, illness and death that miners endured. It's no doubt true that many of the people Potter spoke to in this book felt that things were changing for the worst, but there is a sense of denying or rejecting the inevitable, which Potter seems unwilling to confront.
Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Potter manages to blend the personal with the political in a way that feels natural, and I was left with both a sense of fondness for this area, and some interesting questions to ponder. The biggest question, for me, was this: how do we maintain a feeling of community as the geographic footprint of our lives increases?
This book is a unique snapshot of a specific part of England, at a specific time in history. My dad is from the Forest (in fact, he grew up in the same village as Dennis Potter) and the vivid descriptions of the culture and people of that area in the 1960's gave me a fascinating glimpse into his childhood. Many of the themes - gentrification, cultural clashes between older and younger generations, the shift towards the political right in working class communities - feel startingly relevant even 60 years after the book was written. Potter is a wonderful writer, managing to capture the beauty and whimsy of the Forest whilst staying firmly down to earth, and his deep affection for the people of this region bleeds through every description.
Now, for the elements I found less satisfying: Potter claims to reject nostalgia, but his fondness for the old traditions and ways of life in the Forest borders on sentimentality. When describing the shift towards more modern sensibilities in the young people there, he focuses mainly on the negatives - commercialism, loss of regional character, the economic impact of pit closures - with only brief mention of the benefits, in terms of changing attitudes towards women and 'outsiders', and the enormous risk of injury, illness and death that miners endured. It's no doubt true that many of the people Potter spoke to in this book felt that things were changing for the worst, but there is a sense of denying or rejecting the inevitable, which Potter seems unwilling to confront.
Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Potter manages to blend the personal with the political in a way that feels natural, and I was left with both a sense of fondness for this area, and some interesting questions to ponder. The biggest question, for me, was this: how do we maintain a feeling of community as the geographic footprint of our lives increases?
January 5, 2016
Forest Of Change By Dennis Potter
I found this slim paperback in the free bookshelf located outside a A train station in Inwood Manhattan. There are around 4 of these that I'm aware of all up this way. I don't know the origin of this, clearly someone who thought that the people ought to read, or be able to if, they want. I don't think it is a lack of books that prevents people from reading. I think they likely think it is an unnecessary chore associated with early schooling which the people are glad to be out of. I think they would rather just do something else like watching TV or playing games, or, well, there are many things to do to pass the time.
Anyway I like these little free book shelf things and often look at them when out on walks sometimes picking up something.
The Forest of Change is a rather oddball title. A small paperback, it has an “As Heard on” BBC Radio 4 sticker affixed to the front cover which indicates perhaps hand carried on a flight across the pond at some time in the past. And that was probably some years ago by now. It is by a famous writer, Dennis Potter. Potter, is internationally famous, at least among the English speakers. His fame arising from his work in electronic media, television, The Singing Detective, and Pennies from Heaven, both big TV series productions with Pennies from Heaven also a fairly successful Hollywood movie starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and features some serious tap dancing by Christopher Walken some 40!years ago.
The Forest of Change appears to be something published from early in the career to capitalize on the later fame. The little book written 1961 is really a documentary of the village where Mr. Potter grew up. It is a coal mining town called the Berry Hill, Forest of Dean.
The book is indeed about change, and in particular the changes that have occurred basically since the end of World War II, rapidly, within a span of less than 20 years, in this little coal mining town. For one thing, the mines in the region are all closing. There is some material about the nationalization of the mines which happen not so long ago in the timeframe of the book, 1946. According to the Wikipedia on the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of 1946 was felt to be necessary to prevent idleness. I assume this related to the drop off of need after the energy gorging word war. So I guess by 1961 the need to protect the mining jobs was not what it once was and they were let go front digging the unneeded coal.
So there is that with the older people and the coal and the necessity of no work even in the nimes driving the youth out of the community.
But the book is about the old and presumably long standing community structures collapsing.
The Club (like a pub, drinking place),
The rugby teams; everytown had them and it was a big thing, but falling apart in 1961.
The Band: Every town also had a band which was also a big thing and brought people together.
This is really then of course a story of centralized mass commercial culture, right there in soft control of the changes.
Where there was once a piano and a sing along night in the club, where several people got to solo in their special signature song, there was now a jukebox with the latest pop hit front the USA and that is what the young people want.
And people aren't that interested in the local rugby team. Actually it is hard to get a team up front the scant volunteers. They watch some games front somewhere on the telly on Saturday game afternoon.
They don’t go to chapel any more, dwindling pews.
They all had to re-arrange their houses when the television came. Before the radio was in the kitchen which was the room the family would hang out in, but you couldn’t just put the telly in the kitchen so it went to The Front Room which had been a sort of unused formally attired room. So now in comes the family to hang out in the front room from which out go the heavy serious curtains and out goes the dark drab wallpaper.
This thing is only 130 pages long, but it is all really rather interesting.
He really captured this moment of change into a plugged-in consumer culture.
And some of it, well, it was stuff in an insular working class community that was good to be rid of. It’s not as if he romanticizes the old, or the old ways, he certainly doesn’t.
I found this slim paperback in the free bookshelf located outside a A train station in Inwood Manhattan. There are around 4 of these that I'm aware of all up this way. I don't know the origin of this, clearly someone who thought that the people ought to read, or be able to if, they want. I don't think it is a lack of books that prevents people from reading. I think they likely think it is an unnecessary chore associated with early schooling which the people are glad to be out of. I think they would rather just do something else like watching TV or playing games, or, well, there are many things to do to pass the time.
Anyway I like these little free book shelf things and often look at them when out on walks sometimes picking up something.
The Forest of Change is a rather oddball title. A small paperback, it has an “As Heard on” BBC Radio 4 sticker affixed to the front cover which indicates perhaps hand carried on a flight across the pond at some time in the past. And that was probably some years ago by now. It is by a famous writer, Dennis Potter. Potter, is internationally famous, at least among the English speakers. His fame arising from his work in electronic media, television, The Singing Detective, and Pennies from Heaven, both big TV series productions with Pennies from Heaven also a fairly successful Hollywood movie starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and features some serious tap dancing by Christopher Walken some 40!years ago.
The Forest of Change appears to be something published from early in the career to capitalize on the later fame. The little book written 1961 is really a documentary of the village where Mr. Potter grew up. It is a coal mining town called the Berry Hill, Forest of Dean.
The book is indeed about change, and in particular the changes that have occurred basically since the end of World War II, rapidly, within a span of less than 20 years, in this little coal mining town. For one thing, the mines in the region are all closing. There is some material about the nationalization of the mines which happen not so long ago in the timeframe of the book, 1946. According to the Wikipedia on the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of 1946 was felt to be necessary to prevent idleness. I assume this related to the drop off of need after the energy gorging word war. So I guess by 1961 the need to protect the mining jobs was not what it once was and they were let go front digging the unneeded coal.
So there is that with the older people and the coal and the necessity of no work even in the nimes driving the youth out of the community.
But the book is about the old and presumably long standing community structures collapsing.
The Club (like a pub, drinking place),
The rugby teams; everytown had them and it was a big thing, but falling apart in 1961.
The Band: Every town also had a band which was also a big thing and brought people together.
This is really then of course a story of centralized mass commercial culture, right there in soft control of the changes.
Where there was once a piano and a sing along night in the club, where several people got to solo in their special signature song, there was now a jukebox with the latest pop hit front the USA and that is what the young people want.
And people aren't that interested in the local rugby team. Actually it is hard to get a team up front the scant volunteers. They watch some games front somewhere on the telly on Saturday game afternoon.
They don’t go to chapel any more, dwindling pews.
They all had to re-arrange their houses when the television came. Before the radio was in the kitchen which was the room the family would hang out in, but you couldn’t just put the telly in the kitchen so it went to The Front Room which had been a sort of unused formally attired room. So now in comes the family to hang out in the front room from which out go the heavy serious curtains and out goes the dark drab wallpaper.
This thing is only 130 pages long, but it is all really rather interesting.
He really captured this moment of change into a plugged-in consumer culture.
And some of it, well, it was stuff in an insular working class community that was good to be rid of. It’s not as if he romanticizes the old, or the old ways, he certainly doesn’t.
July 24, 2011
This is an exceptional book: Dennis Potter's first (I think). Written when he was only 25, Potter has managed to take us into the working class village life of the Forest of Dean and expose its sense of change in the late 1950s and early 1960s (the book was first published in 1962). Its tone is much more elegiac than nostalgic – in fact, Potter seems acutely aware of the risk of nostalgia and romanticisation.
It is not a Forest I know, although I live nearby, but having seen the spaces and places of the Forest it is something I recognise as having been there, as in the villages and towns that 50 years later lie like a palimpsest on the landscape and the places that were once small mining villages. Potter is acutely aware of ambiguous relationship – born and raised in the Forest, but the grammar school boy who left although his family remained, and he uses his ambiguity tot position himself inside but no longer quite a member of the Forest world. It also helps make Blue Remembered Hills (an early Potter TV series) more comprehensible.
It is not a Forest I know, although I live nearby, but having seen the spaces and places of the Forest it is something I recognise as having been there, as in the villages and towns that 50 years later lie like a palimpsest on the landscape and the places that were once small mining villages. Potter is acutely aware of ambiguous relationship – born and raised in the Forest, but the grammar school boy who left although his family remained, and he uses his ambiguity tot position himself inside but no longer quite a member of the Forest world. It also helps make Blue Remembered Hills (an early Potter TV series) more comprehensible.
July 22, 2014
Amazing? Well, the other categories didn't seem to cover it. I was five years old when this book was written. My first school was in the Forest, the second on the edge (and all the others in Wales), my mum had been evacuated to the Forest (from Southend), and my dad, a Bevin boy, had been transferred from Cannock (Staffs) to Cannop (in the Forest), so this book means quite a lot to me. What surprises me is that the book seems not to have aged and might almost have been written in today's austere(?) conditions, were it not for the fact that school leavers in the early 60s were walking into relatively well paid jobs.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews