Book Club Report April 2024

This was our last meeting for the season. W

For this last session of the season we each chose a 20th century artist connected with East Anglia. Ian Collins` beautiful and comprehensive books confirmed what a wide field this was. We spent some time pleasurably browsing and discussing if there was an East Anglian style. We concluded that a response to place was the dominant connection rather than a specific style.

We then explored the lives and work of three particular artists: Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) , Edward Seago (1910-1974), John Craske (1881-1943). Fortunately the books were well illustrated, inspiring one to go and look at the real thing. The social context, the artistic influences, success (or otherwise) and the characters of the artists made for fascinating comparisons.

These were the books we used:

Ian Collins, A Broad Canvas: art in East Anglia since 1880. 1990

Water Marks: art in East Anglia. 2010

James Russell, Edward Seago. 2014.Stanley Booth, A.J.Munnings an appreciation of the artist and a selection of his paintings. 2011

Terry Davy and Carolyn Selby Coleman, The Life and work of John Craske Fisherman and Artist . Revised 2021 (this 28 page booklet has over 30 pictures some never seen in print before)

Julia Blackburn, Threads The Delicate Life of John Craske. 2015 (winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2025)

Book Club Report Februrary 2024

We have been following a roughly chronological plan and had arrived at the Second World War. There were many ways of tackling this but we focussed on Thorpe Hamlet. We used two books which depended on primary evidence, the oral memories and objects belonging to the people who remembered that period. The Thorpe Hamlet History Group had previously produced a book in memory of those who died in WW1 and wanted to do the same for WW2. The results of course were different as there were more people alive to remember WW2 but also because the wars had very different effects on the population. One example that struck me was that most of those who died in ww1 were young men away on the battle fields whereas in WW2 the bombs did their destruction on Thorpe Hamlet and on the young and the old. The book was moving but also had the liveliness and personality of individual memories. The organisation of the information, photographs and maps made this a coherent and involving read.

The other book also included memories and experiences of those living in Thorpe Hamlet. The aim was different. Mary Ash`s history commemorates Thorpe Hamlet`s beginning as a separate parish in 1852. WW2 is one of many chapters. Both accounts enriched each other. Mary Ash`s gave the reader a deeper context and had a very strong sense of the place. It made you want to go and explore. In fact two of the group members did exactly that and with the history of it fresh in our mind found it a fascinating place.

At the meeting we were delighted to have Mary Ash attend and describe how she collected and organised the diverse material, a demanding but rewarding experience.

Thorpe Hamlet History Group, A History of Thorpe Hamlet in the Second World War. 2020

Mary Ash, Memories of Thorpe Hamlet Norwich. 2004

Book Club Report January 2024

After the Christmas gap there was another meeting of the History Book Group on 17th January 2024. The book we discussed was Colman`s of Norwich Stories of Former Employees 1935-1995 WISE Archive.

We have arrived mid-20th century in our reading plan. Colman`s, of course, has recurred previously from when we encountered Jeremiah Colman buying the Bawburgh watermill to make mustard in 1803. We had read of the Colman family`s rise in political and social position.

This compilation of individual memories by a voluntary oral history group brought to life the experience of 26 of those directly involved. The description of working conditions was fascinating and horrifying. It also showed the effect of technical development. You could follow how piecework changed into the gradual dominance of the conveyor belt and into automation of whole lines, especially in the contributions headed The Tin Room and Baby Food. It showed at a personal level the growth of departments, office work and quality controls. Out of the individual experiences the national and global trends of industrial and economic change can be seen.

Nearly every contributor mentions the camaraderie, the social and sports life, the pension (for women as well as men),the annual bonus, the Luncheon Club and canteen, the housing in Trowse and Bracondale and the ability to buy your house. "Colman`s was known as a family firm " begins one report. This could refer to Colman`s paternalistic approach originating in the Non-conformism of the 19th century and it is clear that even under the pressure of global changes ( takeovers, mergers, depressions etc) some of this ethos survived. However, the reference here was to the generations of families who encouraged their children to work there, found their marriage partners and lifelong friends in the factories and offices and social clubs. More than one contributor echoed a version of "I loved working at Colman`s" in their report. There was also in the 60s "the real Colman`s life started to go". But even when Colman`s was reduced to just a brand name there was at least "a very generous redundancy package".

A lively detailed well chosen collection made for an enlightening read and a good discussion.

Book Club Report October 2023

We discussed Norfolk Life by Lilias Rider Haggard(1892-1968) and Henry Williamson and Yesterday Morning by Diana Athill. They followed on from Notes from a Norfolk Farm and Akenfield, reflections by individual authors of their experience of rural life in Norfolk in 1930s and 40s. All were written for publication and for different audiences.

Norfolk Life originated in Lilias` regular column in the EDP (Williamson`s contributions were his invaluable highly sellable name and the small rather bossily factual footnotes). Norfolk Life was published in 1943 and went into three impressions immediately, appealing to those at home and those away fighting, evoking what they were fighting for. Lilias` personal experiences of the North Norfolk Coast and Waveney valley mostly avoid the drawbacks of routine rural journalism. Her loving observation of nature sharpens sentiment by noticing the dilemmas of the interaction of wildlife, gardening and farming. The recurring references to current events, historical anecdotes, folk lore and language, local individuals and verse are set in an awareness of the obstinate traditionalism of parish councils and farm workers, rural food poverty and the WI. Lilias was brought up in great comfort, not especially well educated, but in a family that engaged with the world and people. She went on holidays abroad and was a VAD. We liked her.

Diana Athill (1917-2019) was a close neighbour of Lilias, a generation younger. Diana was extremely well educated, full of a confidence that took her to London to an outstanding publishing and writing success. Her perceptive often disconcerting description of her childhood on the Ditchingham estate is personal and conveys the exclusiveness and wealth of her upbringing, the distant relationships within the family, the thoughtlessness towards servants, the combination of required acceptable behaviour and huge freedom to roam. Norfolk has many extensive estates with comparable status and varied histories. Diana`s account illuminates a moment in time, prewar, on the change. It is beautifully written. She wouldn`t care that we couldn`t like her.

Book Club Report September 2023

Another season begins. We had five sessions to plan to take us up to April 2024. There was an abundance of ideas and books with the short list organised and posted on this newsletter.

Akenfield was our summer reading. We all enjoyed and were moved by it. Two of us had not read it since it came out in the 60s and were impressed at how well it had stood the test of time.  But as it turned out a vital question of what sort of writing was this? Non-fiction, realism, poetic, truthful, how much rearranged and fictionalised. On the surface this could be a simple anonymisation of recorded interviews of the villagers to respect their privacy. . The Introduction and Tables suggest a factual, historical examination, the quotations at the beginning of the sections suggest a wider poetic context, the nameless author and interviewer assumed to live in the village gives a brief low key context before most of the voices. These voices. Where do they come from? The chapter title conjures up a typical group - The Craftsmen , The Law, The Young Men, Good Service, Four Ladies . The stereotype is not necessarily exploded but the inner life of that individual is revealed and the way rural life has changed. Reading it now 54 years later we also notice the changes. Examining the treatment of the source material was of course the historical approach. It is an extraordinary book. I should have read more slowly with longer gaps between to absorb and remember more. 49 people. They felt real, poetic creations, truthful to time and place.

Book Club Report May 2023

At the end of May we met for our last meeting of the year, to discuss Henry Williamson’s The Story of a Norfolk Farm. The range of material covered in this autobiographical account of Williamson’s purchase and early working of a farm in Stiffkey in the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 developed some of the themes of our year’s reading as well as our agricultural understanding. So we learnt of the complexity of land law, village life in North Norfolk and the state of agriculture in this pre-war period, as well as the involvement of women in politics, the spread of Fascism, and the increase of motor transport. Also, quite what cottage renovation entailed in the 1930s. Williamson proved an interesting figure himself, combining visionary idealism with pragmatic realism and demonstrating a naturalist bent with literary skill. Despite his obscuring both persons and places, it was quite easy to identify the real-life bases for these, and indeed at least one edition of his book provides a map of his land in Stiffkey.

Book Club Report April 2023

Our April meeting in the Britons Arms discussed Sylvia Haymon’s 1988 account of her childhood in the 1920s, ‘Opposite the Cross Keys: an East Anglian Childhood’. This was indeed not confined to a Norwich upbringing, for much of the book centres on the time Sylvia spent with the family of her nurserymaid, Maud Fenner, in a village whose description suggests, but disguises, Horsham St Faith The book memorably describes the close-to-subsistence existence of the Fenner family. The living room was ‘dirty. Not, be it said, ‘dirty’ uttered as a moral judgment, but purely as a style of interior decoration….It was called Poverty’. In acute detail we learn of the flapping wallpaper, the sulphuric dust, the broken furniture, the stench and so much else; the village had been known for its horsehair weaving, and one way and another Sylvia conjures ‘the place where they had manufactured poverty’. Yet the detailing of attitudes, activities, characters and relationships transcends the poverty through the warmth and bravery of the autobiographer’s experience in this alien environment: the relationship with the gypsy girl who worked in the fields, the awareness of the half-concocted family tales, fierce loyalties and arresting village norms. The account of Norwich characters - not least the quirks of the dedicated Maud - and incidental details also hold much interest. Without exception, then, we found this a compelling and lively read and were minded to learn more of this author who later established a career in broadcasting as well as writing.

Book Club Report March 2023

The March meeting in the Briton Arms broke with our usual format by doing without a lead speaker. The discussion focused on the topic of Norwich, Norfolk, and the First World War, drawing principally on books by Stephen Browning, Frank Meeres and Neil Storey. We were, throughout, haunted by the sadness of the War, accentuated by the bleak lists on the local World War memorials, and the poignant contrast of the term ‘thankful villages’, evidently applied to villages where none had died. We considered much of the local nitty gritty of wartime in Norfolk in the early C20, aspects that we had scarcely registered before: the cycling brigades; the black-outs; the turn to wartime production by local companies, including production of ‘the Royal Air Force boot’; the requisitioning of horses; the role of air combat and the particular menace of zeppelins crossing the county. The proliferation of ad hoc organisations anticipated the growth of State intervention subsequently - presumably intensified by the frequent disorganisation of the war effort. Gratifying connections were discovered with earlier subjects we have explored. The next meeting is scheduled for April 26th, on Sylvia Haymon’s ‘Opposite the Cross Keys: an East Anglian Childhood’.

We welcome new members: anyone who wishes to try out the meetings should contact Kala Nobbs.

Book Club Report - January 2023

Our first meeting on January 18th was sadly depleted but nonetheless stimulating. In an upstairs room at the Britons Arms we discussed Under the Griffin’s Wind by Frederick Cobb, and The Days of the Norwich Trams, by Frances and Michael Holmes.

Much of the Holmes’ book had been condensed in an online talk that they had first delivered at the Norfolk Record Office. Their book is amply and fascinatingly illustrated, and extensively researched in general. The trams were evidently quite late to come to Norwich and lasted from around 1900 to the early 1930s, when they were superseded by motorised buses. The narrowness of the city’s streets meant that many buildings were demolished to make way for them, not least in Orford Place, their terminus. Yet for thirty odd years the trams successfully conveyed a growing commuter population from the suburbs to work, school and onward travel. Indeed, it seems this modern form of transport was a precondition of the development of the estates that surround the city centre.

In Frederick Cobb’s autobiographical book the trams scarcely figure compared with the more lasting transport system of the railways. Cobb’s fifty-year employment started with joining the Great Eastern Railway Company as a clerk on leaving school before the First World War. Through Cobb we learn quite how enveloping such organisations were for their employees, from their football clubs and musical provision to more one-offs, such as the train that started off around 3.00am. to provide a day of film-viewing while travelling. Besides elaborating how the railways operated, Cobb incidentally tells of much else, not least the sheer variety of transport available to a resourceful worker in his out-of-work hours. So we learn of his first acquisition of a motorbike after the War, his subsequent purchase of a car and then a boat. Further life details make this book altogether a most rewarding read - for example, his side-line as, in effect, a valet whilst still at school; his experiences at home and abroad after enlisting as a soldier in the First World War. Such a broad account prompted unaccustomedly broad discussion of historical processes.