John Moore | Articles in Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

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Portrait of Elmbury, [42] 6; Brensham Village,[50] 14; The Blue Field, [58] 14; The Waters under the Earth, [70] 49

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Sprouts and Parsnip Wine | ‘Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle . . .’

Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle. There amid the customary colours of furze and wheat was a seven-acre field that ‘had suddenly become tinctured with the colour of Mediterranean skies’. Nothing like it had ever happened before, so that the villagers caught their breath at the sight of this miracle: a great, vivid patch of cerulean ‘so clear and pure that it made one think of eyes or skies’.

The Blue Field | Part I: Landscape with Figures

We’ll begin at the top of Brensham Hill, because from there you will get a good idea of the kind of country in which our village is set. This is the land which has made and moulded us. Look north, south, east and west, and you shall see as it were the four cornerstones of our character: the ancient foundations of our way of thinking and living, our wisdom, folly, manners, customs, humours, what you will.

England, Their England

Jonathan Keates on John Moore, The Waters under the Earth

At the time of writing, the town of Tewkesbury, in the north-west corner of Gloucestershire, has been cut off by the flooding of its four rivers: the Severn and Avon, at whose confluence it stands, and smaller streams named Swilgate and Carrant. Only the great Norman abbey, with its necklace of Gothic chapels, rises above the turbid brown tides that surge across the meadows. England is more richly watered than elsewhere in northern Europe, but now this very same element seems thoroughly hostile to the humans who planted the woods, ploughed the fields and staked the hedges enclosing them.

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Slightly Foxed HQ. We’d like to reassure all our dear readers that we are dispatching books and goods safely during this time, so please do place orders as usual. Post is taking a little longer to arrive, both in the UK and overseas, but we endeavour to provide you with good reading as soon as possible. We are, as always, very grateful for your support. Speaking of good reading, and to bring some sunshine to this misty November day, we’re escaping to the countryside in the latest free article from the archive, and enjoying parsnip wine with Sarah Perry. Sarah’s article was published in Slightly Foxed Issue 58, and also appears as the preface to our edition of The Blue Field by John Moore. We do hope you’ll enjoy it.

From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves || John Moore, Brensham Village

Easter greetings from Hoxton Square where the office foxes are feeling slightly guilty but mostly delighted at the prospect of having four days off, with little to do but lounge around and read, possibly with a glass of something cold in hand if the weather forecast for England is to be believed. Meantime we’ll leave you to enjoy this suitably seasonal extract from John Moore’s Brensham Village, introduced by Sue Gee . . .

Slightly Foxed at the John Moore Museum

As part of a series of summer events to mark 50 years since John Moore’s death, as well as 110 years since his birth in Tewkesbury, we visited the John Moore Museum and set up shop in the Old Baptist Chapel on a sunny Saturday afternoon in August.

Shadows on the Green

Sue Gee, Preface to John Moore, Brensham Village

The whole vale was carpeted with bloom under a dappled sky. It was a late season; the trees had all come out together, ten million, twenty million boughs had burgeoned on the same blue-and-white April morning. The flowery tide ran…

When Brensham Hill puts on his hat . . .

John Moore, Brensham Village

Almost every morning of their lives the weather-wise people of Elmbury lift up their eyes to glance at Brensham Hill which rises solitary out of the vale, four miles away as the crow flies . . .

Down Tewkesbury Way

Jeremy Lewis on John Moore, Portrait of Elmbury

‘I have written a book which gives me much pleasure. It is a kind of full-length portrait of a small country town – this small town – between the wars. The sort of life that will never come back,’ John Moore told T. H. White in the summer of 1945. Already a well-established and prolific professional writer, Moore had written Portrait of Elmbury in six weeks after leaving the Admiralty Press Division in London to return to his home town of Tewkesbury, and it was to form the first part of a trilogy based on Tewkesbury and its surrounding villages. Portrait of Elmbury and Brensham Village were both published by Collins in 1946, and The Blue Field followed two years later: the names of places and people had been changed, but the disguise was lightly worn.

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