Acky is a unique and simple collection of stories about country life in Suffolk. As the author says: 'You won't find the names of Akerman Flatt and his wife, Sarah, in any parish register. But there were many more like them in the Suffolk villages shortly after the last war - couples who had brought up a family and who were now living by themselves. Acky and Sarah lived in a thatched cottage at the edge of the broad heathland of Fenhall - a village you won't find on any map, either. Acky is one of the survivors of those men who retired after the horses left the farms.' George Ewart Evans catches the language, character and rural humour of Acky and his friends with real knowledge and an unaffected touch, and as successfully here in fictional form as in Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay and his many other classic books about farms and horses in East Anglia and 'the oral tradition' he so valuably preserved. 'Our wisest and most knowledgeable English folklorist.' Robert Graves

The pioneering oral historian, George Ewart Evans, began to record the farming ways of East Anglia in the 1950s by listening to old men and women whose memories went back more than fifty or sixty years. Many were agricultural labourers, born before the turn of the century, who had worked on farms before the arrival of mechanisation.

It was assumed at that time that horses would soon disappear from the farms, and that this was the last chance of recording the part they had played for centuries. It later became clear that this forecast was too pessimistic and in Horse Power and Magic (Faber, 1979) Ewart Evans describes in fascinating detail some important farms where horses continued to be beneficially used more than thirty years later. He discovered that the traditions of the older horsemen had not died out but had been passed on, in only slightly attenuated form, to a younger generation keen to farm with horses, proving that the day of the heavy horse was by no means over. He also describes vividly the ways of horse-tamers whose skills had a touch of 'magic' about them.

'Taking his works a whole, there is no doubt that George Ewart Evans will survive as a fascinating pioneer of the extra-academic recording of human history...he has found a dimension all his own. This is indeed the very stuff of history.' "Sunday Times"

From his landmark study of rural life in East Anglia, "Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay" (1956), George Ewart Evans set about, in a series of books, unveiling the sylvan round of myth and merriment, plenty and hardship, that informed the traditions and texture of country living.

Core to his chronicles is the oral tradition, echoing through the years, and it is this that he concentrates upon in "Where Beards Wag All" (1970). Here are the memories, unmediated and raw, of the craftsman, the drover, the marshman - a chorus to the seasons' constant turn. And it is by no means an idyll they describe: thrift and want, poverty and subjection are often their lyric. The depression of the 1930s is vividly brought to life, and a particularly affecting section details the migration of East Anglian farm-workers to the maltings of Burton-on-Trent.

Sympathetically illustrated by David Gentleman, and containing fascinating period photographs, "Where Beards Wag All" is a touching and faithful portrait of the countryside of fading memory.

George Ewart Evans is the pre-eminent chronicler of the British countryside; marrying oral history with sympathetic commentary and analysis, over thirty years and in a series of books, he afforded a unique view of a receding world.

"Spoken History" (1987) is a retrospective of his remarkable achievements. It describes his pioneering methods, as well as the broad cast of characters he has interviewed across the years in seeking out the story of the land. What shines brightly is his love of dialect and his respect for its rich expression - as noble a vehicle for historical truth as more conventional modes. He also argues the case for historians to cast their net more widely, to entertain different voices, different cultures, in a more meaningful survey than documents alone can provide.

The book is testament to a dimming way of life, and to a visionary man who strove to capture our final glimpses of it.

The Suffolk Punch - that sturdy, compact draft horse of noble ancestry - was, until mechanisation, the powerhouse of the East Anglian farming community. In The Horse in the Furrow (1960), renowned social historian George Ewart Evans explores this potent symbol of a bygone era, and the complex network - farmer, horseman, groom, smith, harness-maker and tailor - which surrounded it. Evans charts a fascinating course, demonstrating the connectedness of husbandry, custom and dialect, and arguing for an organic, inclusive study of these aspects of rural life. In particular, the section on folklore sheds light on some of the most obscure practices, with the Punch standing proudly at its centre. With beautiful illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe, The Horse in the Furrow is an engaging and subtle portrait of an animal at the heart of its community

Following his two classics, "Ask the Fellows Who Cut the "Hay and "The Horse in the "Furrow, renowned oral historian George Ewart Evans continues his study of the vanishing customs, working habits and rich language of the farming communities of East Anglia with "The Pattern Under the Plough" (Faber, 1966). Although based on East Anglia, this book was and remains of wider interest, for - as the author pointed out at the time - similar changes were occurring in North America, and also happening with remarkable speed in Africa.

In chronicling the old culture George Ewart Evans has taken its two chief aspects, the home and the farm. He describes the house with its fascinating constructional details, the magic invoked for its protection, the mystique of the hearth, the link of the bees with the people of the house, and some of their fears and pre-occupations. Among the chapters on the farm is one of Evans's most original pieces of research: the description of the secret horse societies. Beautifully illustrated by David Gentleman, this book is important not only for the material it reveals about the past but for the implications for present-day society.

'As real (and as valuable) as the evidence unearthed by the spadework of archaeology.' "Observer"

George Ewart Evans's pioneer work in oral history has been widely acclaimed; the importance of this source of historical knowledge has long been recognized both in this country and the United States. In The Days That We Have Seen (Faber, 1975) he shows the way in which oral history works and illustrates his point by printing some exceptionally valuable recorded talks by old men and women in East Anglian villages, whose tools and customs - and indeed whose ways of speech, which often survived from the times of Shakespeare and even Chaucer - repeated what had been familiar to many generations before them. The use of common land hardly changed for centuries. Who today understands the importance of hay in the farm economy, when we are concerned with a different sort of fuel? The author also investigates the activities of those who went to sea: the herring industry, farm workers who became sailors after the harvest, and migratory labour from Scotland. As fascinating to the general reader as it is valuable to the historian, the book is imaginatively illustrated throughout with photographs and black and white line drawings.

From Mouths of Men (Faber, 1976) is the culmination of George Ewart Evans's studies in oral history. It rounds off and complements the author's previous book, The Days That We Have Seen - which dealt with 'the country' and 'land and sea' - by applying the same methods to 'the town' and 'mining'. The result is a valuable extension of the oral history technique, giving authentic pictures of the lives of domestic servants, business methods at the beginning of the century (there is a vivid contribution by Lord Rhodes), horse-transport in a small town (Aldeburgh when it was a fashionable watering place), clothes of the period, and the hard life of the miners in Wales. Widely acclaimed as classics, George Ewart Evans's pioneering books on oral history have been as avidly read as the great diarists and chroniclers of the past, by a succession of generations. The book is illustrated by a remarkable series of photographs and vivid black and white line drawings.

In a sense all history begins in the soil; and we cannot understand the development of our own home county or region unless we know something of the story of its farming. The Farm and the Village (Faber, 1969) is an introduction to farming as it was carried on in East Anglia before the large-scale use of self-propelled machines. Up to roughly the beginning of the twentieth century, the preparation of the land, the sowing of the seed and the harvesting of the corn had not changed to any great extent since the time of the Romans. George Ewart Evans, in addition to investigating the usual sources, listened to the memories of many men and women who were brought up under the old system of farming, taking them as authentic historical records. From them we learn how farming supported and bound together the people of the village into a community. Imaginatively illustrated with integrated photographs and black and white line drawings, this is the fourth book in the author's classic series about the farm and the old farming community in East Anglia. The Farm and the Village was written primarily for younger readers, but adult devotees of his earlier works will also find much to enjoy.

Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay is a vivid portrait of the rural past of Blaxhall, a remote Suffolk village, in the time before mechanization changed the entire nature of farming, the landscape and rural life for good. In the 1950s, George Ewart Evans sought out those who could recall the nineteenth-century customs, crafts, dialects, tools, smugglers' tales and rural beliefs which had endured from the time of Chaucer, and created this fascinating picture of a now vanished world.

The Leaping Hare is a rare and remarkable book about every aspect of the life and legend of the wild hare, exploring nature, poetry, folklore, history and art. A frequent feature in the mythology of many cultures, the hare has been linked with mystery and witchcraft throughout civilisation, and still today retains an air of enchantment. 'A lovely book that is both exploratory and rooted in a sense of the hare's mystery..' Seamus Heaney

In 1948, shortly after settling with his family in the village of Blaxhall, Suffolk, George Ewart Evans started recording the conversations he had with neighbours, many of whom were born in the nineteenth century and had worked on farms before the arrival of mechanisation. He soon realised that below the surface of their stories were the remnants of an ancient, rural culture previously ignored by historians. In the detail of village architecture, the of superstitions of tree-planting and rituals house-building, in the esoteric practices of horse cults or the pagan habit of 'telling the bees', The Pattern Under the Plough unearths the rich seam of customs and beliefs that this old culture has brought to our communities. Even in modern societies, governed by science and technology, there are still traces of a civilisation whose beliefs were bound to the soil and whose reliance on the seasons was a matter of life or death.

The old valleys have got something flying about in them beside the coal dust...Voices of the Children is a delicate and heartfelt story of the golden, ephemeral, uncertain world of childhood. Set in a rural mining village in South Wales in the years leading up to the Second World War, George Ewart Evans has recreated a magical but alive world that will resonate with our memories, real and imagined, of childhood. The hills were freedom, and the valley was the shop, milking the cow, errands, difficult customers, and, last of all, the new baby.

George Ewart Evans, who wrote the classic Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, was one of the pioneers of oral history. This anthology is drawn from his writings about the memories of men and women of a past era - farm labourers, shepherds, horsemen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, sailors, fisherman, miners, maltsters, domestic servants and many others. The anthology is edited and includes drawings by David Gentleman.

'A pleasure to look at and a delight to read . . . A treasury of country folklore in words and pictures, and a monument to a great and pioneering man . . . It is right that the past should be heard of in the words of those who lived it . . . Those who actually cut the hay.' Daily Telegraph