BOOKS & ARTS
Our history tours are led by experts who bring momentous events
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taking of Monte Cassino, we examine crucial episodes, analyse the
protagonists and explore the locations where events took place.
Tours are all-inclusive, with privileged access at key sites.+LVWRU\WRXUVWKDWVSDUNOH
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martinrandall.com
ATOL 3622 | ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085Image: diadem of Charlemagne, engraving c. 1880.‘The lectures were treasures, rich in detail and brilliant
distillations of the multiple complex histories of political,
religious, economic and cultural developments in
the region.’ – Participant on The Western Balkans.Tours include: Charlemagne to Charles V | The Age of Bede
Indian Summer | The Western Balkans | Poets & the Somme
Memories of Monte Cassino | Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo
Crown & Cromwell | In Churchill’s Footstepsoff by the dreaded enclosure laws. As far
back as 1751, the poet and novelist Oliver
Goldsmith could lament how ‘desolation
saddens all the green’ in his famous poem
‘The Deserted Village’.
The Village News makes its case with
dogged determination. Each chapter is
dedicated to a single village (or occasion-
ally two), invariably with a strong literary
or historic connection. A standard format
quickly becomes apparent: Fort arrives
pedalling on his bicycle, chats to a local
or two, maybe visits the pub or the cricket
pitch, then gets down to dissecting what-
ever book or event drew him there.
The result is a whistle-stop tour around
non-urban England, from dormitory vil-
lages in commuterville to picture-post-
card honeypots in the Cotswolds. One of
the book’s joys is the host of rural writers
we meet along the way — albeit, most of
them are dead. Some, like Ronald Blythe
and Laurie Lee, are stalwarts of the theme.
Others are lesser-known writers, such as
the ‘high priest of fundamentalism’ H.J.
Massingham or the amateur historian
Rowland Parker (who diligently charts
the history of his Cambridgeshire cottage
through two millennia).
While the canon of rural writing gives
the book shape, Fort treats the vast major-
ity of it as a straw man. In his view, nothing
has done more to pander to the nostalgic
temperament of this Sceptred Isle than its
literary tradition. Tellingly, he has to turn
to a Welshman for a necessary corrective.
With regard to eulogistic depictions of
rural England’s Golden Age, the academic
and critic Raymond Williams was fond of
employing the metaphor of an escalator: in
whatever period such a depiction appears,
Utopia is always located ‘imprecisely in
the past’.
The Village News does a fine job of setting
the record straight — if at somewhat great-
er length than is perhaps necessary. Whereit really excels, however, is in its hard-edged
analysis of the contemporary ramifications
of the idyll myth. Travel with Fort to Askrigg
(of All Creatures Great and Small fame),
or Birbury (stamped on the inside cover of
all UK passports) or Troutbeck (home to
Wordsworth’s ‘Lakeland statesmen’) and
you will find villages cursed by their prim
perfection. Preserved in aspic, England’s
classic villages are rooted unnaturally in
time. Aesthetically flawless, they are atro-
phying before our eyes.This is not true for all villages. Some are
in rude health. Fort’s own village of Son-
ning Common in south Oxfordshire, for
example, has doubled in size over the last
50 years. It is blessed with schools, a pet-
rol station and Zumba classes in the village
hall — everything a modern villager needs.
Yet, even by the author’s own judgement,
it is a ‘deeply unremarkable’ place. Gener-
ic 1960s estates abound. The car rules. As
myth has given way to reality, so function-
alism has won over form.
With the same gusto that it deconstructs
the Arcadian lie, The Village News endeav-
ours to rescue rural England from the jaws
of builder-led blandness. Villages need to
be allowed to grow, Fort insists. But they
must do so organically and preferably by
community consent. The task isn’t easy, as
his own hilarious experience of drawing
up a Neighbourhood Development Plan
testifies. Holiday-home owners and week-
enders don’t want their idea of rural bliss
messed with. Tough luck, says Fort. Villages
must develop or die: it’s a binary choice.
His hard truths won’t be to everyone’s
liking. More time pounding the pavements
might have offered a more nuanced view
at times too. Yet, without question, this
pedal around the parishes is an entertain-
ing and provocative read on a subject close
to every English heart.Our villages are mostly unremarkable
places, where generic 1960s estates
abound and the car rules