Review of 'One Green Field' by Edward Thomas

This is a beautiful little book...a collection of short descriptive pieces about the English countryside that I might never have read. It was given to me by our lovely friend Pat Kattenhorn as a birthday present. If it hadn’t been for Covid-19 and Lockdown I wouldn’t have got nearly so much out of it; but we’ve tried to pass some of the time by going for very long walks away from roads and people. The weather has been glorious, and we’ve taken in some wonderful scenery. We’ve been much more aware of nature, both plants and animals. At the beginning it was all very quiet too, so it seemed much closer to Thomas’s world of the early twentieth century. As the pandemic has worn on  there’s been more traffic on the roads, and even though we’ve been on the footpaths we can hear it again. Even so, I can still feel a connection with the world that Thomas describes. Like him we’ve come across hidden brooks that splash and meander on their way towards rivers, and cattle resting in fields, and old farm machinery left to rust. 

If it hadn’t been for this time I’m not sure I would have appreciated the book so much. It’s been perfect for late-night reading, full of wonderful imagery without much plot or narrative, at once capturing and pacifying the restless mind. When I finished it I read a little of Thomas’s biography, and learned that he was a friend of Robert Frost, and that in a way Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ killed him. I guess I won’t hear that again in the same way.