Housman Country
Into the Heart of England
$45.77
- Paperback
624 pages
- Release Date
30 May 2017
Summary
Why is it that for many people ‘England’ has always meant an unspoilt rural landscape rather than the ever-changing urban world in which most English people live? What was the ‘England’ for which people fought in two world wars? What is about the English that makes them constantly hanker for a vanished past, so that nostalgia has become a national characteristic?
In March 1896 a small volume of sixty-three poems was published by the small British firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &a…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780349140681 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0349140685 |
| Author: | Peter Parker |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Imprint: | Abacus |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 624 |
| Release Date: | 30 May 2017 |
| Weight: | 480g |
| Dimensions: | 40mm x 128mm x 196mm |
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Critics Review
Peter Parker’s book is replete with fabulous observation
Peter Parker’s book is replete with fabulous observation * The Times *
In offering this rich blend of literary criticism and cultural history, Parker proves to be the perfect guide to what he calls ‘Housman Country’, measured and discreetly witty … his fine book reminds us why so many readers still have passages of A Shropshire Lad by heart * Spectator *
It is as a biographer that Parker excels – John Carey * Sunday Times *
Peter Parker’s new book is much more than a biography, and having lured us into Housman’s life with a magpie’s eye for detail, he then sets out on a tour of Housman Country - not a geographical area but a landscape of the mind in which “literature, landscape, music and emotion” all contribute * The Economist *
Parker’s intricate and beautiful exploration of Housman’s influence on everything from English music to the way our identity is shaped by our relationship with the weather, the land, the distant horizon, speaks with peculiar poignancy to our times * Mail on Sunday *
Housman Country offers three books for the price of one: a lucid biographical portrait; a study of Housman’s lasting influence on our culture; and, as an appendix, the whole of A Shropshire Lad - a volume that has never been out of print in 120 years. The poet who emerges is complex: cheery, grumpy, generous, begrudging, gentle and robust … as Parker shows in his fine study, the borders of Housmanland are
uncontrolled and stretch as far as Russia and China
A fascinating cultural history * Prospect *
Parker - one of the few biographers, I suspect, who has actually shorn a lamb - penetrates to the Englishness at the heart of A. E. Housman. The book is appropriate for a year which may see the end, or rebirth, of the country – Spectator * John Sutherland *
Housman Country tells us many things about England, whose future has so often been taken to lie in its past, while also raising questions as to what England can tell us about Housman – Paul Keegan * London Review of Books *
This is really three books for the price of one: a partial biography of Housman; the biography of his most famous book; and the whole of A Shropshire Lad itself, reprinted for ease of reference while you enjoy Parker’s patient, clear-sighted analysis of the poems * Sunday Times *
Peter Parker’s beautiful Housman Country tells you everything you want to know about the life and influence of England’s most satirised but inimitable poets * Evening Standard *
Peter Parker
Peter Parker was born in Herefordshire and now lives and gardens in London’s East End. He is the author of two books about the First World War, The Old Lie and The Last Veteran, biographies of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood, and Housman Country: Into the Heart of England. He has written about plants and gardens for HORTUS and the Daily Telegraph, and is a former Chair of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library Advisory Committee.
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