A Report On Rural Life In England And Wales, Based On Actual Village Scrapbooks by Paul Jennings

For we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet, wrote GK Chesterton in the poem The Secret People. This is an important, unique book, because in it the people do speak in a simultaneous survey and celebration. It is written by people themselves, the people to be more precise of the villages of England and Wales. The main content of living village is a selection from the best of some 2600 scrapbooks entered in a national competition to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the National Federation of Women's Institutes. Each scrapbook covered a year of village life. Young and old, Men and women contributed. There are memories and hopes, fears and joys. The entire field of rural life in these transitional times is covered. The clash of new and traditional the impact of the motor car and TV. The decline of the railway. The mechanicalisation of farming and commuter explosion. Dialect, customs, Recipes, the preservation, observations of nature, the changing educational system, Youth Services, Many of the scrapbooks are already in libraries, archives or universities, and are prized as unrivalled records for the future.