Böcker av Phyllida Barstow

It Happened in Gloucestershire is a vibrant and compelling account of the county's diverse heritage; its heroes, its battles, its inventors, its outlandish sports. Phyllida Barstow's lively prose transports the reader across the county: from its stunning cathedral to its swan lake at Slimbridge, taking us surfing the Severn Bore, tumbling down Cooper Hill on the notorious Cheese Race, round the challenging course at Badminton and to Imjin Hill, site of the tragic stand of the Glorious Glosters. The book celebrates those who have helped to put Gloucestershire on the map: Eddie the Eagle, William Morris, Vaughan Williams, Desert Orchid, William Tyndale, Richard III - as well as the varied claims to fame of Concorde, GCHQ, the Cotswold Lions, the conqueror of small-pox, the Gloucester Old Spot and the hardy miners of the Forest of Dean.

Many smallholders have plunged in at the deep end and learnt the hard way, through experience. But Phyllida Barstow, author of the childhood autobiography My Animals and Other Family, was already involved in animal husbandry when, as a young woman, she embarked on her own smallholding enterprise. Here is her lively, informative and witty account of her first-hand experience throughout her lifetime in Gloucestershire, with chickens, dogs, cats, horses, sheep, peacocks, alpacas and even honey bees.As she points out, smallholding is not a summer idyll but, truly, a job for all seasons, all hours, all weathers. She also has to deal with fallen stock, pest control, disease outbreaks and slaughter. Her tips include those on animal handling, training, breeding and delivery. Her wry and practical attitude towards her animals is imbued with respect and often affection for her charges.This account of the realities of modern smallholding is both entertaining and informative.

Falling truly, madly, deeply in love with one animal after another was a recurrent theme of the author's childhood, actively encouraged by her beautiful, impetuous mother as she single-handedly held the family together during the war's darkest days.While her husband's regiment battled through the Tunisian desert to Italy and Austria, she criss-crossed beleaguered Britain with children, ration books, and an unwieldy train of rabbits, dogs, cats and ponies, dreaming of land of her own.But farming can't be learned overnight, and translated into the reality of 400 acres of hilly, rain-lashed Radnorshire, that dream became a challenge for all ranks. Dragooned into acting as unskilled, unpaid labour for jobs that would make today's Health-and-Safety freaks blench - burning rushes, driving tractors, riding on Land-Rover bonnets and towering haywains - the children came to look on boarding-school as a rest-cure, though they retain from those days of carefree, unregulated farm life a treasure-house of memories.This elegant memoir, told with disarming honesty and gentle humour, follows the development of a lively, headstrong, self-effacing young girl into womanhood.