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‘Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle . . .'

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’.

There could be no doubt who was responsible for this act of rebellion: William Hart, who – against the directives of government authorities, and in defiance of the farmer’s ordinary seasonal rotations – had planted a field of linseed. ‘“Have you seen old William’s field?” people said. “It does your heart good to look at it; but Lord, I wouldn’t be in his shoes when the trouble starts!”’

The Blue Field is the last in John Moore’s trilogy which pays tribute to an England that seems, somehow, both absolutely familiar and impossibly remote. I first encountered Brensham during an arduous recovery from illness. A lifelong walker and seeker-out of hidden places, I was unable to wander much more than ten minutes from home, but to read John Moore was to be transported instantly away from the dreariness of recuperation to a fragrant field in high summer . . .

Sarah Perry on The Blue Field, in Slightly Foxed Issue 58. Click to read the full article.

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