A Shropshire boyhood

the long version

The year is 1939, the year of the war. The place is Little Ness, a sandstone village in the shadow of the Shropshire hills. Peter Davies was then a boy of eleven, living with his family on their farm in the heart of the village. "A Shropshire Boyhood" is a wonderfully nostalgic and poetic account of the year when he was transplanted into a small-town grammar school, on the very day war began. Peter is a gifted and original writer, and he beautifully contrasts country life - running wild with gypsies, raiding a kestrel's nest, drinking mare's milk - with sophisticated Shrewsbury. Vitality and humour shine through on every page, as the author paints an evocative picture of a rural community that was barely touched by the war, where life was regulated by the farming seasons and the church calendar, and where children grew up with a love of nature that is all too rare today.