THE Northern Marches are the counties bordering England and Wales—Mont-
gomery, Shropshire, Denbighshire, Cheshire and Flint. Mr. Cledwyn Hughes is a native of a valley on the Welsh side and to him this is obviously the spot beloved over all. There is no flaw in his paradise and while he can be comparatively dispassionate about flora and fauna and the rotation of crops, he grows very large-eyed over almost every- thing else. It is no great surprise, to learn that village girls now use lipstick and farm labourers play darts in the local, but to Mr. Hughes this happens in the Marches and is therefore both rich and strange. " Each May the swallows come " : after a hundred pages of this sort of simple wonderment, the alien reader from outside the border country would like to hear about a lion. The most interesting touches are those con- cerning the impact of Welsh and English on one another, but they are not easy to find amidst the welter of lush trivialities. In spite of much erudition and careful research, the general effect is of naïveté overtrimmed with ornament.
Miss Lofthouse's book, though weighed down with a title like an outsize luggage label, is a much tidier affair. Her two journeys, from Liverpool and Warrington to Penrith, were made by car and bus and on foot over roads that to most travellers are as little regarded as railway lines, being merely the distance between two fixed points. This boor takes them slowly, with time for the author to make the many little sketches which illustrate it. Past and present are unobtrusively blended and if Miss Loft- house is less concerned than Mr. Hughes with Oldest Inhabitants, she is much more coherent about architecture and useful foot- paths. Anyone pursuing these stretches of A.6 and its tributaries should find her a sure guide against missing something of interest.
M. L.
Previous page
