Kirjahaku

Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire and grew up in London but wished for a life in the open air. In 1920 he apprenticed himself to a West Suffolk farmer, an experience that would inspire him to farm on his own. His celebrated trilogy Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932) grew out of that same raw material. The Cherry Tree (1932) finds Bell back at the helm of the Silver Ley farm whose running he took over in the second panel of the trilogy. The farming business remains in a parlous state beset by high costs, and Bell is forced to scale back his ambitions for crop-growing while continuing to breed cattle and horses. But perhaps the greatest upheaval the book describes is the tale of how he 'wearied of solitude and married a wife.'

Adrian Bell (1901-1980) was born in Lancashire and grew up in London but wished for a life in the open air. In 1920 he apprenticed himself to a West Suffolk farmer, an experience that would inspire him to farm on his own. His celebrated trilogy Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932) grew out of that same raw material, and Corduroy (reissued here with an introduction by his son, the journalist Martin Bell) remains his most admired work. 'There is a vitality and freshness of manner about this modern pastoral which carries one easily along through a pleasant maze of turnips, mangolds, and the yearly routine of a Suffolk farm. As the seasons change and the crops come and go, the green young apprentice is gradually initiated into the mysteries of coaxing a hazardous living from the soil.' Spectator

Adrian Bell's travels through East Anglia and lowland Britain reflect a world on the brink of change. Published in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, his down-to-earth descriptions of the countryside were shaped by his own life working the land. Whether it be hedgerow flowers, a livestock auction, traditional farmyard, village forge, wheelwright's shop, the arrival of the tractor in the harvest field, the work of the ploughman, shepherd or woodman, Men and the Fields captures the character of rural life before modern agriculture altered the landscape and changed forever the way we eat and live.This new edition restores the original colour lithographs and black and white line drawings by John Nash that appeared in the first edition.