Tel. 01535 604387
A Song to Sing and a Tale to Tell
Published by Brown Ferguson, Glasgow
ISBN 0 85174 620 9
Jean Brown's story of her experiences with children on holiday in the Hebrides is a song in praise of beautiful islands and isolated shores. It tells of the hospitality of the Hebridean crofters, their humour and the challenge of extremes of weather. It tells of the activity and joy of the Yorkshire children.
We'll See The Cuckoo
By
Jean Brown
ISBN 1 85821 161 1
In this wonderfully rich and evocative memoir, Jean Brown tells of her family, of her daily life on a Pennine hill farm and twenty-one years as head of a village school. It is an invitation to experience a farming background, a Dales school and to accompany her as she remembers twenty-five years of camping with children on Scottish islands
|
Offer We'll trace the Rainbow £18.00 subsequent books £1.00 discount e.g.' We'll see the cuckoo' £17.00 - £1.00 'A song to sing and a Tale to Tell' £11.95 -£1.00 Packing and postage free. In the U.K. Please add £2.50 postage for overseas All books personally signed. Available from HH Brown, Currer Laithe,Long Lee,Keighley BD22 4SL Tel. (44) 01535 604387 |
Their sixteenth century farmhouse, now covenanted to The National Trust, is balanced just short of the hilltop, not precariously, for though the valley is steep, its foundations are firm.
Those living there can see beyond the farm boundary, across the dale, to the autumn purple of Ilkley Moor and the winter table cloth of Ingleborough.
She feels her life has mirrored the pattern of the Dales, always climbing, frequently falling, often in sunshine but uncomplaining if a storm rages, confident it will abate.
A pinnacle, she says, is to climb not to live upon. She knows that though mist may shroud the opposite ridge, so that the only way seems to be down, it is only an illusion. Though she goes down she will climb up again.
Her story of life in the Yorkshire Dales, begun in We,ll see the cuckoo continues in We,ll trace the rainbow. It is told with humour and joy, wonder and gratitude. It will make you laugh and cry and also leave you with some of the eternal optimism of the Brown family.
FARMING memoirs are not uncommon, but Jean Brown's autobiography stands apart from the rest on several counts. Nearly 600 pages long, it's a detailed and substantial read which encompasses a good deal more than an account of the farming side of her life.
She writes nostalgically about her childhood in the nineteen thirty's, 21 years as head mistress of a local village school, and her many sojourns to the Hebrides in her role as a guide leader , interweaving the events of her life with those of a supportive and loving family.
This account of everyday life is full of reminders of how much rural Britain has changed in the last thirty years-it's hard to imagine children today collecting rosehips to sell for a penny a lb for the school fund. Jean Brown comes across as one of life's givers not takers; yet she writes modestly about her achievements, saying that her book is "about ordinary people getting the maximum fun out of ordinary things"
Farmers weekly 10 February 1995