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This is the long story of Sally Ann from a fourteen-year-old
child-woman who met an older man at a village dance, through to
motherhood while the Battle of Britain raged overhead. Her father,
old Mr Sutton, a gentle kindly man, telling his wry humorous tales
from an earlier age when his father seemed to employ the entire
village. Solemn young Sidney who managed his life to the last
farthing, farms in partnership with his shy, sensitive older
brother who suffered a catastrophic personal loss; only saved by a
supportive auctioneer who provided a lifeline of man-to-man
friendship. This is also the story of the birth of the Second
Agricultural Revolution told in three ages: nineteen twenty-nine;
nineteen thirty-nine; nineteen forty-nine. Daily life in the
English countryside emerges through the stormy lives of the main
characters.
Originally published in 1974, this book evaluates and compares
three important styles of sociological research: positivism,
symbolic interactionism and critique. The book describes and
evaluates each research technique as an experience for the
researcher, and the author explains what they themselves have
learned of sociological meaning from engaging in it. The book
traces the main ideas through their last generations of
sociologists and asks what future there is in a particular method.
Sociology is about society, but what about people? The person in
the sight of sociology is all too often a matchstick being. In this
original and stimulating book the person is characterized by what
is inherent in a social being, and the result is a rich narrative,
the story of the person told through events in life. The author
holds that for sociological purposes, the person must be seen as
perfect: perfectible, perfecting and perfect. He outlines the
'trialectical' nature of such a theory, offers a test of it in the
making of madness and claims that such a change in vision is
appropriate for the sociologist's critical engagement in the world.
It may be claimed that Colin Fletcher has created a new realm of
theorizing and a piece of literature for sociology. And, perhaps as
important, the reader may catch the rare experience of being spoken
with as a person by another person.
Sociology is about society, but what about people? The person in
the sight of sociology is all too often a matchstick being. In this
original and stimulating book the person is characterized by what
is inherent in a social being, and the result is a rich narrative,
the story of the person told through events in life. The author
holds that for sociological purposes, the person must be seen as
perfect: perfectible, perfecting and perfect. He outlines the
'trialectical' nature of such a theory, offers a test of it in the
making of madness and claims that such a change in vision is
appropriate for the sociologist's critical engagement in the world.
It may be claimed that Colin Fletcher has created a new realm of
theorizing and a piece of literature for sociology. And, perhaps as
important, the reader may catch the rare experience of being spoken
with as a person by another person.
Writing fiction after years of diligent and conscientious attention
to detail, was a revelation. The story simply flowed chapter by
chapter; the development of characters who in turn dictate the
course of the story was a special delight. Then I learned that
quite often one paragraph dictates the flow and rhythm of the next,
as much as the characters dictate their own behaviour. John a
skinny boy we first met in an English churchyard planting primroses
on his brother's grave, becomes a central figure to this story. He
survived against odds to raise a large family yet emerges as a
complex character. The birth of a calf is a thrill for the whole
family that owes nothing to financial security or base ambition or
fear of starvation; it is a new life, an elementary joy. Even the
most ancient, gnarled, grizzled farmer will stroke the calf as
tenderly as a new mother, and John was no exception. He returned to
check the cow four or five times in a few hours. Later in the
evening he came out of the house saying he would "Just have a last
look before bed." Outwardly, an apparently simple villager, yet
also capable of filling the place of the late priest, his mentor,
during the terrifying downward spiral of the Black Death. A time
when the death toll was so heavy that all must have feared for
their own survival. John's eldest child Edith, inherits his
strength and holds the family together through turbulent times,
culminating in the Peasant's Revolt. The young king's fear and
revenge threatened any excited young man who might have followed
the meetings from town to town until they reached the rising
industrial city of Salisbury. The newly built spire of the
cathedral gleamed in sunlight, mocking the furies at street level.
Incensed by the monstrous poll tax furious rebels provoked a
military crackdown. Even the deafening racket of the weaving shops
had been silenced till order was restored. But revenge was taken
brutally for the remainder of a long, bloody summer.
At the opening of this story, a group of farmers market traders a
clothier have all survived the Peasant's Revolt, yet still feel
threatened by the young king's revenge. A poor widow lost her
husband and son in the violence, a farmer's son from White Clyffe
swept up in the excitement was arrested in Salisbury at the height
of the rebellion and has not been seen since, a clothier abandoned
his established business near Bridgewater fearing suspicion of
involvement, conspiracy. Their lives, loves and fears are explored
among the villages and towns of the West of England. The story
moves from rural Wiltshire to the rapidly industrialising city of
Salisbury, commercial activity in the Severn Estuary and an escape
to Honfleur in France.
In this latest book, Fletcher writes about some of the most
profound pleasures that nature has brought him over the years.
At age sixty-seven, Colin Fletcher, the guru of backpacking in America, undertook a rigorous six-month raft expedition down the full length of the Colorado River--alone. He needed "something to pare the fat off my soul...to make me grateful, again, for being alive." The 1,700 miles between the Colorado's source in Wyoming and its conclusion at Mexico's Gulf of California contain some of the most spectacular vistas on earth, and Fletcher is the ideal guide for the terrain. As his privileged companions, we travel to places like Disaster Falls and Desolation Canyon, observe beaver and elk, experience sandstorms and whitewater rapids, and share Fletcher's thoughts on the human race, the environment, and the joys of solitude.
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