Happy Harvest
Wiltshire Harvest. By H. H. Bashford. (Constable. 10S.)
ONE of the many surprising things discovered, or rather unearthed, by the Second World War was the amazing productive power of thousands of acres of neglected, often derelict, land in Britain, that peace had decided were not worth farming. In 1939 few counties displayed a larger proportion of this type of land than Wiltshire; and, during the next ten or a dozen years, no other county reclaimed and farmed those one-time useless acres more successfully. The Moon- rakers used every discovery of science and invention to enable them to bring their light chalk land into full production. Wheeled tractors stuttered on the level, and track-layers crawled on the hill-sides; gorse was uprooted, and thorn-bushes were pulled out; rabbits fled in terror, and even the steepest slopes of the sacred Downs felt iron. The resultant harvest of good food was tremendous, consider- ably larger than anybody, especially those who did the work, antici- pated.
Much has been written in just praise of that achievement, perhaps too much; anyway, because of it Sir Henry Bashford's book comes as a very pleasant change. For his Wiltshire Harvest is not of crops or stock, but rather of those many precious things that the spacious charming landscape of that county still provides, but which are known to so few. In other words, here, at last, is a country book that is different. For instance, in his chapter on the Downs the only mention of Stonehenge is to be found in the author's suggestion that Constable, when he was in Wiltshire, "seems chiefly to have been hypnotised by Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge." It is for that reason that he considers that to date there has never been a great picture of the downs. Then comes a lovely sentence, "For- tunately they have learned how to wait."
Never has a more varied load of sheaves been stacked in one book. "Ploughing" is followed by "Bathroom Noises"; you can read of "Going to Church," "Walking About" or "Bus to Salisbury"; of "Borrowing," "The Code" and "The Tradition"; of "The Fete," "The Marrow" and "The Last Trout"; of "The Forest," "The Lane" and "The Village"; and of many other country things that seem so little yet mean so much. Even the delightful, unhurried but competent haste of Wiltshire's rural life is here safely harvested between the covers of one small book. For example:
"So I was glad, when I woke up, to remember that it was a summer day; that it contained no engagements apart from those that the village or garden might create; and that, if visitors came, they would come unexpectedly, which is the best way of all."
It is that sort of flavour which should ensure this Wiltshire harvest being stored, not in a barn, but on countless bedside tables.
A. G. STREET.
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