’THE LONE SWALLOWS’

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 19

’THE LONE SWALLOWS’

Mr Henry Williamson needs no introduction to the average reader—certainly not to the Nature lover. His ‘ Tarka the Otter ’ and ‘ The Old Stag ’ and other books from his pen have had a wide circulation. Mr Williamson’s books have been warmly praised by Thomas Hardy, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, and other noted literary men. His stories reveal the qualities of painstaking observation, highly developed imagination and artistic consciousness. In ‘ The Lone Swallows ’ (Putnam) Mr Williamson has retained the tithe of his first “ nature book,” together with most of its contents. Otherwise it is a new book, containing as it does many fresh chapters, including the long Nature diary which was written, hy the author when a boy at school just before the Great War. Thus ‘The Lone Swallows’ represents both the earliest and latest writings of the author. It is an interesting study of the development of style. Appropriately the hook is dedicated to Richard Jefferies. The dead and the living writers had much in common in an intense love of Nature and of the English countryside and its shy, wild creatures. Jefferies wrote, amongst other books, ‘ The Dewy Morn ’ and ‘ Every Living Creature,’ and the titles of these works indicate the trend not only of his thoughts and interests, but they can also be applied to Mr Williamson.