Paul Brassley | Contributors to Slightly Foxed literary review

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Dr Paul Brassley is a rural historian who has lived on Dartmoor since 1983. He taught at Seale-Hayne College, part of the University of Plymouth, for many years, but since 2009 has held fellowships at Exeter University. Most of his research has been concerned with the economic, technical and social history of agriculture and rural life in Britain, concentrating, in recent years, on the period 1850-1985, although earlier he specialised in the early modern period. He is currently working on a book about the Home Front in the Second World War.

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articles by, [39] 81; [65] 78

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Prophesying War

Paul Brassley on Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Europe I Saw

I enjoy reading thrillers. I might like to claim that literary fiction is my constant companion, but for most of the time it isn’t – the novels that Graham Greene described as his ‘entertainments’ give me far greater pleasure than his more serious books. Similarly, when my work as a historian took me to the period between the First and Second World Wars I found that Eric Ambler’s thrillers, written at the time, effectively captured the contemporary atmosphere, just as do Alan Furst’s more recent books. Both explore the impact of the interwar struggle between fascism, communism and democracy on innocent individuals, men who find their lives tossed about on the great waves of history. But always men. What about the women?

Bain’t Feasible

Paul Brassley on A. G. Street, Farmer’s Glory

It was May 1968. Students all over Europe were in revolt. My heart was with them, but my bottom was on a chair in the agricultural section of the university library, where I was revising for the end-ofyear exams. Eventually I could take no more of the life-cycle of the frit fly, that scourge of the oat crop, and got up to stroll round the shelves, vaguely scanning titles: Profitable Sheep Farming, Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, The Pig: Modern Husbandry and Marketing . . . Then my eye was drawn to a book I’d never seen before: Farmer’s Glory, by A. G. Street.

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