Subscribe to Read | $0.00
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Read Anywhere and on Any Device!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
On March the 21st 1913, the poet Edward Thomas set off from Clapham with the intention of heading to Somerset in the West Country searching out the first signs of spring. His journey on his bike would take him through the lanes of Surrey, through my home town of Guildford, across the downs and past Winchester. He heads across a pre-Army controlled Salisbury Plain and onto Somerset where his journey ended.This is a heady blend of travel, natural history and architecture as well as the history of
An english journey westwards from the outskirts of London to meet the full emergence of spring in Somerset. A journey, for me as the reader, to another time described with the benefit of Thomas’s observational skills. The same skills that you would encounter in his poetry which started to flower, briefly, a few months or years later. There are so many familiar themes - the invisible connections of singing birds (‘Farther and farther, all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire’.); the close...
Hard work; it’s essentially a writer’s notebook covering a cycling journey from London, over Salisbury plain and to Somerset in search of Spring. Some fine descriptions, some funny observations and it’s poignant because it’s from 1913 - but it’s uneven and lacking structure.
BBC Blurb - Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was arguably the most accomplished and profound writer of English rural prose, with a unique poetic-prose style. His reputation rests almost entirely today on his poetry, the one hundred and forty four poems which he wrote in the last two years of his life, between December 1914 and December 1916. In January 1917 he embarked for France and the Battle of Arras in which he was killed on April 9th, 1917.As a prose writer Edward Thomas is often overshadowed by h...
Best way to read this is alongside the National Library of Scotland's maps, 6 inch 1888 to 1913. It was very enjoyable to trace Thomas' journey and look at how things have changed since. Lots of memorable writing, including bemoaning the "occasional motor car". Now look what we have to endure! Thomas' journey has given me plenty of ideas of places to visit. The only parts I skimmed through were the sections on poetry. Everything else was a joy.
The title gives the best clue to the point of the journey: it was 1913, a wet and windy March, and poet Edward Thomas was heading westwards from south London, on foot and bicycle, to chase down the spring. His journey ends in the Quantock Hills when he spots the first bluebells. "Winter may rise up through mould alive with violets and primroses and daffodils, but when cowslips and bluebells have grown over his grave he cannot rise again: he is dead and rotten, and from his ashes the blossoms are...
I can't remember now how this book came to be in my Kobo library, nor how long it had sat there unread. It's not listed on Gutenburg, as I thought, but it was definitely free! Nevertheless, I soon abandoned the quirkiness of its haphazard text for a properly formatted Kindle edition; it was that good, it was easily worth the two quid and change I paid.In essence, it's a travelogue by bicycle; a solo ride from South London to the Somerset coast, by way of the Quantock Hills. He set forth in Easte...
All of the ingredients that would go into Thomas’s poetry are evident here. Prose allows Thomas to stretch his legs, to be funny, and to demonstrate his mastery of that most important human trait of all; a talent for digression.
Wonderful walking, cycling book. Thomas travels through English countryside and quaint villages in 1913. He is an extraordinarily descriptive writer. His prose reads like verse. I love his descriptions of nature, old churches, cottages, and villages. I especially enjoyed his descriptions of the villagers. I want to go back to England, 1913.
From BBC Radio 4:In a special series for Easter week, presenter Matthew Oates follows in the footsteps of the writer Edward Thomas
A slow moving, wonderfully detailed account of journey from London to Somerset by bicycle and foot just before the start of WW1.The second half of the journey travels through the areas I was born in. I was not surprised by how much had changed in the landscape - that was inevitable - but I was was surprised at how much had stayed the same. Pubs, road junctions, lakes and even some patches of woodland that I knew in my youth are in this book - I really liked that.Highly recommend - but do not exp...
I am never going to finish this book, I thought I would like it, as I enjoy going on long bike rides, but no, too boring.
It was nice reading this after just having spent some time in England, and in some of these landscapes, and having that sense of where he is, and its beauty.In this journey Thomas bicycles through the English countryside in search of spring but the journey is just a vehicle for his love of the English landscape, of his favourite writers and poets and his personal reflections on the world.Thomas’s prose style has dated a little (he’s clearly a better poet than travel writer I think) and it’s full...
Disappointingly pedestrian - so much of the book is very bland description of what he passes; you might almost think the book was being written to pay the bills. There are brief flashes of light, though.
