Kirjahaku

A combination of social comment, biography and natural history, this book is also a witty account of Tom Fort's obsession with the eel, his journeying to discover the eel in all its habitats, and the people he meets in his pursuit.

Grass and its organisation into lawns is a particularly English obsession.

A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year Peer into the secret, silent world of the freshwater fish and explore evolution of the art and industry of fishing in Britain's rivers and streams.

Tom Fort, whose writing has been variously described as 'jocund', 'slightly loopy', ' unbelievably poignant' and 'deeply peculiar', travels around Britain experiencing some of its extremer climates and some of its more typical with a view to explaining what we make and have made of the British weather and what it has made of us.There are two interlocking strands: the story of those who - moved to an exceptional, sometimes obsessive degree by the fascination felt by so many of us - sought to know and understand our weather; and the story of its impact on us - our history, our culture, the way we think and behave.He focuses on the people - the clergymen, the gentlemen of leisure, the crackpots, visionaries, charlatans and shysters, all now largely or utterly forgotten - who volunteered and toiled for the cause, telling their stories by tracking them down to the places - usually their own gardens - where they indulged their quite passion for measuring rainfall, scrutinising dewdrops, tapping their barometers and peering at their thermometers.Once their age - of the amateur scientist - was over, and the business of weather forecasting was annexed by professionals with state backing it became a less colourful affair.The historical strand is, in part, a straightforward chronology; an account of the part played by climate in our history; how, when the sun shone and rain fell in gentle abundance, we prospered and multiplied; how, when the climate cooled, bringing wet summers and savage winters, we perished by plague and famine and retreated from places made unbelievable; how in time, as we matured from a rural, peasant society, our weather became less a matter of life and death (though always on absorbing interest).But beyond that there is another dimension to its influence on us - the moral and spiritual one.This is contentious, but intriguing: the extent to which we share as view of 'our weather', and the extent to which it may have shaped us into the people we are.

Travelling partly on foot and bicycle, but chiefly in a plywood fifteen foot punt, Fort journeyed through the unsung heart of Middle England, showing him the unseen face of his own country.

'You have to be on your guard when you go back to special places. You may be able to locate them easily enough on the map, but maps tell only one story. Times change and places and people with them. The memory plays curious tricks, and things aren't always as you remember or expect.' Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, bound for all points east. Eastern Europe was still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare, blinking, injured, full of fears but importantly full of hope too. Things were different then. Czechoslovakia was still Czechoslovakia, Russia was the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had not formally dissolved. But what did exist then, as they do now, were the rivers: the nations' lifeblood. It was along and by these rivers that Fort travelled around Eastern Europe meeting its people and immersing himself in its culture.Since that trip though, much has changed and in more recent years around one million Poles have settled in Britain. Fort's local paper has a Polish edition, his supermarket has a full range of Polish bread, sausage and beer and an influx of Polish businesses opened in his town centre. And it's not just the Poles, his gym has a Lithuanian trainer and the woman who cuts his hair is from Hungary. As a tide of people began to leave Eastern Europe and settle in the UK, Tom Fort started to wonder about what they were leaving behind and whether the friends he had made all those years ago remained. And so he decided to make the journey again, travelling against the flow of the steady human stream to explore the once familiar places. As he did so, many began to return as the recession took hold of Western Europe. Tom was keen to find out what had changed and how the places, people and way of life had moved on and of course fit in a spot of fishing along the way.

'Tom Fort has a unique knack of finding new ways to reflect Britain back to ourselves and Lido Land may be his best book yet!' Charlie Connelly, author of The Shipping News People are currently flocking back to Britain’s lidos in their thousands. But this isn’t the first time they’ve made a splash. From the author of The A303: Highway to the Sun comes a deep dive into the historical and cultural significance of the British lido that will make you fall in love with outdoor swimming. Tom Fort takes us on a fun-packed journey around the UK’s lidos past and present, proving that lidos can tell us more about social trends, progress and political ideology than you might think. Along the way he takes us to the only surviving Lido in Wales, built in the 1927 to help miners wash off their daily dirt, to the Portobello Pool in Edinburgh where Sean Connery was once a lifeguard, and around the iconic seaside towns of Blackpool and Weston-super-Mare where the loosening of Victorian moral standards could be measured by the shrinking of swimming costumes. Along the way, we meet the beauty queens competing for the Miss New Brighton crown at the Merseyside lido in 1966, a mayor who finished Guildford lido’s opening ceremony by stripping off his robes and gold chain and diving headfirst into the water, and we spend time with the colourful characters involved in designing, creating and keeping lidos afloat through the years. His journey shows us, time and time again, the personal significance of the lidos’ communal spaces – the unmistakable cold of the water rising above your shoulders, the sounds and smells of poolside sunbathing, the sun-baked tiles underfoot and the warm towel after a freezing dip. Fort, with his characteristic wryness and nostalgia, gathers memories and observations from the swimmers he meets along the way, interspersing these with historical fragments and moments from his own history. He laments the lidos we have lost, celebrates those saved by persistent community organising, and takes a frank look into their future.

Ahumorous, discursive, utterly absorbing journey from Dover to Land's End, along the English Channel shore, the busiest waterway in the world

The Village News is a whimsical, funny and informative travelogue by pedal power of a variety of villages across our nation that encapsulate, or showcase, all the best elements of what could be seen as the English village.

'A nostalgic experience, informative, humorous, charming, but pervaded by the bitter-sweet scent of regret' Daily Mail'Fort has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that, like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph'A lovely book...At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British road' Guardian The A303 is more than a road. It is a story. One of the essential routes of English motoring and the road of choice to the West Country for thousands of holidaymakers, the A303 recalls a time when the journey was an adventure and not simply about getting there. In this fully revised and updated edition, Tom Fort gives voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of Stonehenge, Roman roads and drovers paths to turnpike tollhouses, mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history, geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way of life.

'A hymn to hardware, charming, lyrical' - The Sunday Times, BOOK OF THE WEEK'A paean to DIY' - The Times'Strung together very agreeably, with dry wit and, dare I say it, considerable polish' - Country LifeIn 2018 Tom Fort's daughter-in-law took over a century-old hardware shop. The family dreamed of developing the shop into one that would become the centre of village life; that much did come true, but not in the way they had expected.Interweaving the evolution of the shop, its previous owners, the customers it serves and the items it sells, Rivets, Trivets & Galvanised Buckets offers a delightful study of community and shines a light on the eccentricities of ordinary people. Alongside, it presents a fascinating history of technological development; from who thought of screwdrivers to where the spirit level came from, who devised the process of galvanisation and what genius worked out that a suction pad on the end of a piece of wood could unblock sinks.As Tom recounts: 'A little girl came with her father into Heath and Watkins, looked around for a while and said "Daddy, this is the shop of EVERYTHING"'. This is the story of how that happened.

'A hymn to hardware, charming, lyrical' - The Sunday Times, BOOK OF THE WEEK'A paean to DIY' - The Times'Strung together very agreeably, with dry wit and, dare I say it, considerable polish' - Country LifeIn 2018 Tom Fort's daughter-in-law took over a century-old hardware shop. The family dreamed of developing the shop into one that would become the centre of village life; that much did come true, but not in the way they had expected.Interweaving the evolution of the shop, its previous owners, the customers it serves and the items it sells, Rivets, Trivets & Galvanised Buckets offers a delightful study of community and shines a light on the eccentricities of ordinary people. Alongside, it presents a fascinating history of technological development; from who thought of screwdrivers to where the spirit level came from, who devised the process of galvanisation and what genius worked out that a suction pad on the end of a piece of wood could unblock sinks.As Tom recounts: 'A little girl came with her father into Heath and Watkins, looked around for a while and said "Daddy, this is the shop of EVERYTHING"'. This is the story of how that happened.

Tom Fort, former angling correspondent for the Financial Times, is one of the most incisive and funny fishing writers in Britain today. This sparkling collection of his writings finds Tom at Ceausescu's bear-hunting lodge in Romania, at a fishing auction in the Home Counties, being thwarted by a bunch of hard-mouthed Brazilian dourado, on a press freebie in Scotland and in a terrible state on the Kennet - not to mention conducting a fantasy celebrity interview with Isaak Walton himself. Whether fishing in some exotic far-flung location, or simply leaning over the parapet of an English bridge gazing at the stream below, Tom Fort always manages in his stylish and witty way to pinpoint something important with which all anglers can identify.