Weald of Kent and Sussex. By Sheila THE author demonstrates
beyond doubt her abundant knowledge of her terrain and its history, literature and legend. She seeks first to present a topographical survey of the Weald and takes us on conducted tours along the minor railways of the region. These lines, however, for the most part run across the grain of the country and appear to have thwarted the author in her purpose of giving a picture of the area "as a shape, as a pattern, as a whole." The second part of the book deals with the history, industry, religion, superstitions and place-names of the Weald. On page 129 there is a long quotation from The Ancient State of Britain by a mediaeval chronicler, Richard of Cirencester. One would not gather from the author's passing comment that "his- torians are uncertain of the chronicler" that the treatise was in fact a forgery, the invention of Charles Bertram (1723-65) who has been described as the most successful literary impostor of modern times. If Miss Kaye-Smith knew Yorkshire as well as she knows the Weald, she would never have referred to beautiful, unspoiled Swaledale as an industrial area "with its smoking, grimy towns, its dreary mining villages, its coke- ovens, its foundries, its factories, its stunted blighted trees."
T. S.
Previous page
