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A Countryman's Winter Notebook
‘Bell writes always of the ordinary things, of the seasons, of memories, of rain and laughter. Gentleness fits him naturally, just as the purity of his words opens our eyes to a life all around us which we might otherwise never have seen.’
So wrote the journalist Clement Court of his contemporary, the farmer-cum-writer Adrian Bell, best known for his rural trilogy, Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree, which vividly describe a time before machinery took over much of the work of men and beasts, altering the landscape and the face of farming forever.
In addition to the books that followed his famous trilogy, from 1950 to 1980 Bell wrote a weekly column called ‘A Countryman’s Notebook’ for Suffolk and Norfolk’s long-serving local paper, the Eastern Daily Press. His columns were, as his son Martin Bell says in his preface, ‘not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life around him’, and these essays share that which is common to all his writing – a deep appreciation of the small moments of each passing day. Now a selection of these beautifully crafted essays has been gathered together and introduced by Richard Hawking to form the first, we hope, of a quartet of Bell’s writings on the seasons.
Winter, properly, begins the series. In those days the weeks after harvest were a peaceful time for seeing out the old year and planning for the new. With microscopic concentration, Bell watches as a dead leaf performs an exuberant dance on a single thread of gossamer; he plucks the very last rose from his garden; and he delights in stirring up, in a pot pourri, all the fragrances of summers past. As the first frost snuffs out the showy fireworks of dahlias, he rejoices in the emergence of the splendour of chrysanthemums in cottage gardens. No detail escapes his watchful eye.
This is poetic, sublime and profoundly wise writing, often surprising and sometimes very funny. A shaft of sunlight through a hole in the clouds becomes ‘a leak in the scheme of glory’, and, when skating on a frozen pond, even a hardworking farmer is ‘endowed with the motion of a bird, the grace of a seagull, the speed of a swallow’. But he can also chuckle when guests are alarmed in the early hours by a clanking sound: he knows it is simply ‘an itchy cow, rubbing her bony foretop on a reverberating water-tank’.
Bell once said that he wanted his writing to show a unique moment, which will never come again. And so it does. The delight of this collection is its unexpectedness: it is like being in the company of a gentle old friend, whose mind and memory are as ramblingly various as they are endearing. He knew that, and he was glad: ‘I like inconsequence,’ he wrote. ‘It is so true to life.’
So wrote the journalist Clement Court of his contemporary, the farmer-cum-writer Adrian Bell, best known for his rural trilogy, Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree, which vividly describe a time before machinery took over much of the work of men and beasts, altering the landscape and the face of farming forever.
In addition to the books that followed his famous trilogy, from 1950 to 1980 Bell wrote a weekly column called ‘A Countryman’s Notebook’ for Suffolk and Norfolk’s long-serving local paper, the Eastern Daily Press. His columns were, as his son Martin Bell says in his preface, ‘not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life around him’, and these essays share that which is common to all his writing – a deep appreciation of the small moments of each passing day. Now a selection of these beautifully crafted essays has been gathered together and introduced by Richard Hawking to form the first, we hope, of a quartet of Bell’s writings on the seasons.
Winter, properly, begins the series. In those days the weeks after harvest were a peaceful time for seeing out the old year and planning for the new. With microscopic concentration, Bell watches as a dead leaf performs an exuberant dance on a single thread of gossamer; he plucks the very last rose from his garden; and he delights in stirring up, in a pot pourri, all the fragrances of summers past. As the first frost snuffs out the showy fireworks of dahlias, he rejoices in the emergence of the splendour of chrysanthemums in cottage gardens. No detail escapes his watchful eye.
This is poetic, sublime and profoundly wise writing, often surprising and sometimes very funny. A shaft of sunlight through a hole in the clouds becomes ‘a leak in the scheme of glory’, and, when skating on a frozen pond, even a hardworking farmer is ‘endowed with the motion of a bird, the grace of a seagull, the speed of a swallow’. But he can also chuckle when guests are alarmed in the early hours by a clanking sound: he knows it is simply ‘an itchy cow, rubbing her bony foretop on a reverberating water-tank’.
Bell once said that he wanted his writing to show a unique moment, which will never come again. And so it does. The delight of this collection is its unexpectedness: it is like being in the company of a gentle old friend, whose mind and memory are as ramblingly various as they are endearing. He knew that, and he was glad: ‘I like inconsequence,’ he wrote. ‘It is so true to life.’
- GenresNonfictionEssays
224 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2021
6 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Adrian Bell
56 books15 followersAdrian Bell is one of the best-known of modern writers dealing with the countryside. His books are noted for their close observations of country life.
The son of a newspaper editor, Bell was born in London and educated at Uppingham School in Rutland. At the age of 19 he ventured into the countryside in Hundon, Suffolk, to learn about agriculture, and he farmed in various locations over the next sixty years, including the rebuilding of a near-derelict 89-acre smallholding at Redisham.
The son of a newspaper editor, Bell was born in London and educated at Uppingham School in Rutland. At the age of 19 he ventured into the countryside in Hundon, Suffolk, to learn about agriculture, and he farmed in various locations over the next sixty years, including the rebuilding of a near-derelict 89-acre smallholding at Redisham.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 17, 2025
I don’t want this to be finished! 😭 I loved it.
January 12, 2022
First of all, this is a book which begs to be judged by its cover. There is an inescapable compulsion to simply drown in the depths of this beautiful deep blue cloth, with simple silver words and a sprig of ivy like spume riding atop ocean waves, all of which sumptuously sinks into your hand with a perfection of size and feel. Inside are the usual pleasures of a Slightly Foxed edition, the crimson ribbon, the creamy pages, though sadly this particular “limited edition of 2,000 copies” does not have the individual number inked inside. I suppose it’s insignificant, but whenever I get one of their editions, I look to see what number my particular book has, feeling a sense of connection to 1,999 other readers out there.
Of course, the reading of this book does present a few minor dilemmas. Should it be read cover to cover? Dipped into on occasion, or perhaps on a regular schedule? I went with the former, fearing that if I were to only taste a column or two at each touch, I would be distracted by other books or claims on my time and suddenly be into Spring before finishing, and I definitely wanted to read this during the appropriate season. Perhaps next winter, I will force myself to read just one item every other night, which will last me most of a winter. For of course, these weekly columns were not written to be read in a collection, although in one of the last items Bell discusses pasting copies of his weekly columns into keepsake books, foreshadowing this very edition. At that point he even questions who of his descendants will appreciate having and storing those keepsakes, eventually asking “Who was he anyhow?” At times, also, the non-chronological ordering of individual columns can seem incongruous if read en masse, as the tone of Bell just entering his fifties differs greatly at times from that of his late seventies. Yet all of that is overcome by the wonderful language and pace of each column, even those that may seem less memorable, and Bell’s affection for his environment, his wife and neighbors, glows throughout even when simply detailing disputes over how to prune roses. He has a simple yet poignant, poetic sense without florid veneer, always able to paint for you the landscape in front of him. “The sun flickered this afternoon like a great candle on a table of green fields, singling a grey rag of last summer’s thistle, drawing long fingers of shadow from the bases of tree trunks, bosoming clouds pinkly as if they were full of blessings and not hail.”
Be prepared, however, with a soothing cup of cocoa at hand and the loving snores of a warm hound at your feet, for without being heavy-handed or morose, Bell’s wintery themes do tend to melancholy and loss, though always with his own wry humor. For Bell, “the small eye”, the “eye for details” that comes with winter accompanies the increased time for reflection, for introspection, and without all the rush and business of the growing season, he naturally notices with each year the changes around him, and how in many respects they are forever changes accompanying the loss of bygone ways and prospects. Heavily the loss of trees weighs on Bell’s mind, or the fading from use of once common tools and even fence gates, as the slowly consuming waves of modernity erode the shores of a bucolic past already shrinking when he was young.
While never morbid, the loss of his neighbors and friends is also never far from winter’s winds, for “They go on digging, scything, hedging into extreme old age. This curse of Adam seems to keep them alive. It is the pause of winter which overcomes them at the last. In the dead season they take to their beds one by one.” Yet those moments are, for me, the heart of this book. It is his “old friend who would stoop among headstones if we stopped beside a strange church, would sort of take them by the shoulder and look in their faces” with whom I feel most connected. “‘I just have a curiosity to know them,’ he remarked, ‘the ones everybody has forgotten.’ And he would stop and crouch and move aside ivy, and peer. He was an old man then, and now is he dead.” But the mention of his death is just in passing, not the focus. It is rather the passing of his friend’s own time which is lamented.
It is a joy, not untouched with sadness, to read this volume and come closer to answering “Who was he anyhow?”, not just with respect to Bell himself, but the everyman of his time and place about whom, and for whom, he wrote. The “ones everybody has forgotten.” What better volume to have at your hand, when nursing a winter chill in bed? “How pleasant the hermit’s life in midwinter, provided the walls of his cell are lined with books.”
Of course, the reading of this book does present a few minor dilemmas. Should it be read cover to cover? Dipped into on occasion, or perhaps on a regular schedule? I went with the former, fearing that if I were to only taste a column or two at each touch, I would be distracted by other books or claims on my time and suddenly be into Spring before finishing, and I definitely wanted to read this during the appropriate season. Perhaps next winter, I will force myself to read just one item every other night, which will last me most of a winter. For of course, these weekly columns were not written to be read in a collection, although in one of the last items Bell discusses pasting copies of his weekly columns into keepsake books, foreshadowing this very edition. At that point he even questions who of his descendants will appreciate having and storing those keepsakes, eventually asking “Who was he anyhow?” At times, also, the non-chronological ordering of individual columns can seem incongruous if read en masse, as the tone of Bell just entering his fifties differs greatly at times from that of his late seventies. Yet all of that is overcome by the wonderful language and pace of each column, even those that may seem less memorable, and Bell’s affection for his environment, his wife and neighbors, glows throughout even when simply detailing disputes over how to prune roses. He has a simple yet poignant, poetic sense without florid veneer, always able to paint for you the landscape in front of him. “The sun flickered this afternoon like a great candle on a table of green fields, singling a grey rag of last summer’s thistle, drawing long fingers of shadow from the bases of tree trunks, bosoming clouds pinkly as if they were full of blessings and not hail.”
Be prepared, however, with a soothing cup of cocoa at hand and the loving snores of a warm hound at your feet, for without being heavy-handed or morose, Bell’s wintery themes do tend to melancholy and loss, though always with his own wry humor. For Bell, “the small eye”, the “eye for details” that comes with winter accompanies the increased time for reflection, for introspection, and without all the rush and business of the growing season, he naturally notices with each year the changes around him, and how in many respects they are forever changes accompanying the loss of bygone ways and prospects. Heavily the loss of trees weighs on Bell’s mind, or the fading from use of once common tools and even fence gates, as the slowly consuming waves of modernity erode the shores of a bucolic past already shrinking when he was young.
While never morbid, the loss of his neighbors and friends is also never far from winter’s winds, for “They go on digging, scything, hedging into extreme old age. This curse of Adam seems to keep them alive. It is the pause of winter which overcomes them at the last. In the dead season they take to their beds one by one.” Yet those moments are, for me, the heart of this book. It is his “old friend who would stoop among headstones if we stopped beside a strange church, would sort of take them by the shoulder and look in their faces” with whom I feel most connected. “‘I just have a curiosity to know them,’ he remarked, ‘the ones everybody has forgotten.’ And he would stop and crouch and move aside ivy, and peer. He was an old man then, and now is he dead.” But the mention of his death is just in passing, not the focus. It is rather the passing of his friend’s own time which is lamented.
He had been a child in a house by St Michael’s Common, along a stretch of byway containing then a windmill, a wheelwright’s shop, a forge. There, the burning of iron tyres on to wagon wheels took place, with smoke and steam and hammering. Harvest was slow processions of wagons of sheaves and Suffolk horses that he watched being shod at the forge. So he mused in the glow of his recollections, of mill sails and wheels with huge elm hubs. And laid a hand on angels inscribed on a headstone in stopping to read ‘Elizabeth Pratt’ as if she were a friend he should know or remember.That column, placed early in the book, was written 24 years after a column placed closer to the end which nevertheless offers glorious echoes of the vignette, with Bell discussing his affection for ivy and ending, “It climbs the tombstones. Last summer it had veiled the quotation on one I pass. Now it has reached up and laid a leaf over the Z of ‘Eliza’. I should like my memory to be so greenly eclipsed.”
It is a joy, not untouched with sadness, to read this volume and come closer to answering “Who was he anyhow?”, not just with respect to Bell himself, but the everyman of his time and place about whom, and for whom, he wrote. The “ones everybody has forgotten.” What better volume to have at your hand, when nursing a winter chill in bed? “How pleasant the hermit’s life in midwinter, provided the walls of his cell are lined with books.”
January 20, 2022
Beautifully written prose writing. Adrian Bell wrote a column for the Eastern Daily Press on subjects generally related to nature and farming which he writes with great charm. I loved it
November 11, 2021
Such simple and convincing language.
June 14, 2023
A collection of Adrian Bell's articles over many decades for the Eastern Daily Press, specifically covering the winter months. It is an inspired idea by the publishers Slightly Foxed to collect these articles seasonally, so that one can follow the onset of winter through to the new year and the first signs of spring via pieces written at different points in time, from the 1950s to the 1970s. These give fascinating glimpses into the life of a Suffolk farmer and the surrounding countryside during a period of huge change and upheaval, and are vitally important in recording some of the old traditional ways that are now entirely lost. Bell writes in beautiful, intimate prose; each piece is only a few pages long yet gives a deep impression. A perfect bedside book for dipping into all winter long.
December 18, 2022
Adrian Bell's writing style is always inviting, gently enveloping you with the subject or story to hand.
This book is a seasonal collection of his weekly columns for the Eastern Daily Press under the moniker 'Countrymans Notebook'. So they are short pieces of about five pages long, reflections on the life and time in Suffolk. They can be wistful but also very funny, the marmalade making one especially so.
My only complaint is not with the writing but with the binding which is incredibly tight and makes opening and keeping the book open a bit of a challenge.
There must surely be more mileage in a series covering spring, summer and autumn?
This book is a seasonal collection of his weekly columns for the Eastern Daily Press under the moniker 'Countrymans Notebook'. So they are short pieces of about five pages long, reflections on the life and time in Suffolk. They can be wistful but also very funny, the marmalade making one especially so.
My only complaint is not with the writing but with the binding which is incredibly tight and makes opening and keeping the book open a bit of a challenge.
There must surely be more mileage in a series covering spring, summer and autumn?
April 13, 2025
Enjoyed dipping into this from time to time (vs daily, like I thought I would). As this took longer than expected, and we're expecting temps in the 90*s, I think I'll skip the Spring essays and go straight to summer. :-)
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December 11, 2025dnf 77/244
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews