Rustic England

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29146, 5 March 1960, Page 3

Rustic England

Man and Bird and Beast. By John volume, the anecdotal nature of

In portraying the English countryside, its people, fauna and flora, John Moore has no rival, and in this book his gifts are fully extended. Though his dissertations on plants, birds and butterflies could fill an ordinary volume, the anecdotal nature of this one gives it its special charm. His old friend, “the Colonel, dodges in and out of the pages, sometimes in the regrettable character of a systematic slaughterer of rare birds, but at others in the more sympathetic role of protector of the old toad which lived at the bottom of his garden, or a fisherman of inspired cunning. The sketch of the village fete is a quintessential comment on an integral part of English life The loud-speaker that (as usual) was out of order issued pregnant proclamations and instructions which came out uniformly as “Wah, wah, WAH." Anxious ladies poised themselves for the exquisite moment when a descent on the jumble stall would be authorised; the rector thankfully produced at the close his immemorial joke “The rectory port —any port in a storm.” and the day’s takings amounted to the staggering sum of £lO5. all of it earmarked for the churchfabric fundHere is the li f e and soul of rustic England. The Woolly Man was a worthy with his own craft —that of selecting bait (one of them being maggots bred ins a sheep’s head) —for the fish whose whereabouts he always knew in some uncanny fashion of his own. Old Herbie, the greenfingered gardener, believed in treating seedlings rough, and while poking them into ground with a horny forefinger, would apostrophise them m such unparliamentary language that he was not persona grata with village ladies who might otherwise have benefitted by his undoubted talents. John Moore has some tn-ter comments to make on those fond parents who heedlessly let loose trigger-happy offspring with a gun. and no instructions on how to use it. a folly often fraught with tragic results, and he enjoys himself at the expense of two odious female relatives who. professing loudly to be “animal lovers” did not hesitate to poison rats with phosphorus, while being sentimental about the “cruelty of shooting rabbits. The author’s immortal tyrant of the poultry yard was known as “old Bronzie.” This re^? u , bt ‘ able fowl remorselessly bullied a succession of laying pullets, and would lay an occasional grudging and unpalatable egg as a substitute for eating those of ner more productive colleagues. These i are only some of the stories which irradiate the pages of a > book many people will want to , buy and keen.