The Story Of The Fens

Author : Daisy Johnson
Publisher : Random House
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2016-06-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781473523647

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Fen by Daisy Johnson Pdf

Revisit the haunting debut short story collection from the Booker-shortlisted author of Everything Under. 'Full of unabashedly, refreshingly angry women... In a year that made me furious, Daisy Johnson’s Fen was a howl I didn’t know I needed' Celeste Ng The Fen is a liminal land. Real people live their lives here. They wrestle with sex and desire, with everyday routine. But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt. This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a, well, what? 'Instant classic...a bold, take-no-prisoners collection situated somewhere between Angela Carter and Deborah Levy' Jeff VanderMeer

Author : Francis Pryor
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 459 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2019-07-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781786692238

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The Fens by Francis Pryor Pdf

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. 'Francis Pryor brings the magic of the Fens to life in a deeply personal and utterly enthralling way' TONY ROBINSON. 'Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' GUARDIAN. Inland from the Wash, on England's eastern cost, crisscrossed by substantial rivers and punctuated by soaring church spires, are the low-lying, marshy and mysterious Fens. Formed by marine and freshwater flooding, and historically wealthy owing to the fertility of their soils, the Fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are one of the most distinctive, neglected and extraordinary regions of England. Francis Pryor has the most intimate of connections with this landscape. For some forty years he has dug its soils as a working archaeologist – making ground-breaking discoveries about the nature of prehistoric settlement in the area – and raising sheep in the flower-growing country between Spalding and Wisbech. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation – from Bronze age field systems to Iron Age hillforts; from the rise of prosperous towns such as King's Lynn, Ely and Cambridge to the ambitious drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers – with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist. Affectionate, richly informative and deftly executed, The Fens weaves together strands of archaeology, history and personal experience into a satisfying narrative portrait of a complex and threatened landscape.

Author : Eric H. Ash
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 415 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2017-05-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781421422008

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The Draining of the Fens by Eric H. Ash Pdf

"This book is a political, social, and environmental history of the many attempts to drain the Fens of eastern England during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both the early failures and the eventual successes. Fen drainage projects were supposed to transform hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands into dry farmland capable of growing grain and other crops, and also reform the sickly, backward fenland inhabitants into civilized, healthy farmers, to the benefit of the entire commonwealth. Fenlanders, however, viewed the drainage as a grave threat to their local landscape, economy, and way of life. At issue were two different understandings of the Fens, what they were and ought to be; the power to define the Fens in the present was the power to determine their future destiny. The drainage projects, and the many conflicts they incited, illustrate the ways in which politics, economics, and ecological thought intersected at a time when attitudes toward both the natural environment and the commonwealth were shifting. Promoted by the crown, endorsed by agricultural improvement advocates, undertaken by English and Dutch projectors, and opposed by fenland commoners, the drainage of the Fens provides a fascinating locus to study the process of state building in early modern England, and the violent popular resistance it sometimes provoked. In exploring the many challenges the English faced in re-conceiving and re-creating their Fens, this book addresses important themes of environmental, political, economic, social, and technological history, and reveals new dimensions of the evolution of early modern England into a modern, unitary, capitalist state"--

Author : Annie Proulx
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2023-06-27
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781982173364

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Fen, Bog and Swamp by Annie Proulx Pdf

"A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment-by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth's survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada's Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia's Great Vasyugan Mire, and America's Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands-the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever. A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is "an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important" (Bill McKibben)"--

Author : Stella Tillyard
Publisher : Random House
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2018-07-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781473546370

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The Great Level by Stella Tillyard Pdf

A ‘magical, haunting’ (Philippa Gregory) novel of a tragic love affair in a threatened world In 1649, Jan Brunt, a Dutchman, arrives in England to work on draining and developing the Great Level, an expanse of marsh in the heart of the fen country. It is here he meets Eliza, whose love overturns his ordered vision and whose act of resistance forces him to see the world differently. Jan flees to the New World, where the spirit of avarice is raging and his skills as an engineer are prized. Then one spring morning a boy delivers a note that prompts him to remember the fens, and confront all that was lost there. ‘The most beautiful historical novel you’ll read all year... Extraordinary’ Simon Schama ‘Richly involving... The story of a strange and passionate relationship’ Guardian ‘If you want to be utterly transported to another time, another place, read The Great Level. A haunting depiction of love and difference’ Amanda Vickery

Author : James Boyce
Publisher : Icon Books
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2020-07-02
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781785786518

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Imperial Mud by James Boyce Pdf

**WINNER OF THE HISTORY AND TRADITION CATEGORY, EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2020** **LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021** 'A real page-turner ... a warning about what happens when the rich and powerful dress up their avarice as "progress" - a lesson we could do with learning today.' Dixe Wills, BBC Countryfile magazine FROM A MULTI-AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN, AN ARRESTING NEW HISTORY OF THE BATTLE FOR THE FENS. Between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period, the proud indigenous population of the Fens of eastern England fought to preserve their homeland against an expanding empire. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home - England's last lowland wilderness. But this was no simple triumph of technology over nature - it was the consequence of a newly centralised and militarised state, which enriched the few while impoverishing the many. In this colourful and evocative history, James Boyce brings to life not only colonial masters such as Oliver Cromwell and the Dukes of Bedford but also the defiant 'Fennish' them- selves and their dangerous and often bloody resistance to the enclosing landowners. We learn of the eels so plentiful they became a kind of medieval currency; the games of 'Fen football' that were often a cover for sabotage of the drainage works; and the destruction of a bountiful ecosystem that had sustained the Fennish for thousands of years and which meant that they did not have to submit in order to survive. Masterfully argued and imbued with a keen sense of place, Imperial Mud reimagines not just the history of the Fens, but the history and identity of the English people.

Author : Frank Meeres
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2019-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780750990974

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The Story of the Fens by Frank Meeres Pdf

Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as Peterborough City Council, all lay claim to a part of the Fens. Since Roman times, man has increased the land mass in this area by one third of the size. It is the largest plain in the British Isles, covering an area of nearly three-quarters of a million acres and is unique to the UK. The fen people know the area as marsh (land reclaimed from the sea) and fen (land drained from flooding rivers running from the uplands). The Fens are unique in having more miles of navigable waterways than anywhere else in the UK. Mammoth drainage schemes in the seventeenth and eighteenth changed the landscape forever – leading slowly but surely to the area so loved today. Insightful, entertaining and full of rich incident, here is the fascinating story of the Fens.

Author : Ian D. Rotherham
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2013-04-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780752492681

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The Lost Fens by Ian D. Rotherham Pdf

The loss of the great fenlands of eastern England is the greatest single removal of ecology in our history. So thorough was the process that most visitors to the regions, or even people living there, have little idea of what has gone. For many, the Fenlands are the vast expansive flatlands of intensive farming, the 'breadbaskets' of Britain. Lost are the vast flocks of wetland birds that filled the evening skies in winter, the frozen wetlands and the fen skaters of the winter, and the abundant black terns or breeding wading birds of the summer months. However, pause a while off main roads and consider place names and road names: Fenny Lane, The Withies, Commonside, Reed Holme, Fen Common, Turbary Lane, Wildmore, Adventurers' Fen, Wicken Fen, and more; they tell a story of a landscape now gone but once hugely important. The Fens bred revolution and civil war and paid the penalty. They nurtured religious non-conformism with global impact. After 1066, the Saxons withheld the Normans' onslaught, and in the 1970s, unting's Beavers took action against twentieth-century invaders. The fenscapes, neither water nor land but something in-between, breed independence and, if necessary, dissention. This story is of politically and economically driven ecological catastrophe and loss. So much has gone, but we do not even know fully what was there before. With global environmental change, and especially climate change, fenlands once again have major roles in our sustainable futures.

Author : Francis Pryor
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789544169

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Scenes from Prehistoric Life by Francis Pryor Pdf

An invigorating journey through Britain's prehistoric landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants. 'Highly compelling' Spectator, Books of the Year 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past' BBC Countryfile Magazine 'Vividly relating what life was like in pre-Roman Britain' Choice Magazine 'Makes life in Britain BC often sound rather more appealing than the frenetic and anxious 21st century!' Daily Mail In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of British and Irish prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one million years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen profiles of ancient landscapes. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk c.900,000 BC, the craftsmen who built a wooden trackway in the Somerset Levels early in the fourth millennium BC, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain's first towns, Pryor uses excavations and surveys to uncover the daily routines of our ancient ancestors. By revealing how our prehistoric forebears coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges, Francis Pryor offers remarkable insights into the long and unrecorded centuries of our early history, and a convincing, well-attested and movingly human portrait of prehistoric life as it was really lived.

Author : Paul Kingsnorth
Publisher : Graywolf Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2015-09-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781555979072

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The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth Pdf

"A work that is as disturbing as it is empathetic, as beautiful as it is riveting." —Eimear McBride, New Statesman In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers. In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes increasingly unclear. Written in what the author describes as "a shadow tongue"—a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern reader—The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational, gripping story and a major literary achievement.

Author : Daisy Johnson
Publisher : Random House
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2018-07-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781473523654

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Everything Under by Daisy Johnson Pdf

'Weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling... Dive in for just a moment and you'll emerge gasping and haunted' Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere It's been sixteen years since Gretel last saw her mother, half a lifetime to forget her childhood on the canals. But a phone call will soon reunite them, and bring those wild years flooding back: the secret language that Gretel and her mother invented; the strange boy, Marcus, living on the boat that final winter; the creature said to be underwater, swimming ever closer. In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but to wade deeper into their past, where family secrets and aged prophesies will all come tragically alive again. 'As readable as it is dazzling, full of unsettling twists and dark revelations' Observer **SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**

Author : Joy Ellis
Publisher : Robert Hale
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Detective and mystery stories
ISBN : 0709093063

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Shadowbreaker by Joy Ellis Pdf

As DI Nikki Gelena struggles to come to terms with the tragic death of her friend, a man is found on a piece of wasteland in Greenborough town. The manner of his death, a cold-blooded and professional execution, bothers her deeply, but not nearly as much as it bothers her sergeant, DS Joseph Easter.

Author : Wayne Drew
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2015-11-30
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1908041137

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Shadows on the Fens by Wayne Drew Pdf

Lonely dunes and marshes; ruined mills and lighthouses; unmarked tracks that lead you into the unknown¿¿¿ No wonder so many of the masters of the English ghost story, from M.R. James to E.F. Benson, chose to set their tales in East Anglia. Now, for the first time, the writer Wayne Drew has brought together the very best stories from the ghost-ridden counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire in one volume. Some may be old friends; others have been out of print and lost for years. This collection includes three new stories, to show that the Eastern Counties can still inspire writers to explore the darker side. Featured writers include Noel Boston, Ramsey Campbell, Celia Dale and Gladys Mitchell.

Author : Nicholas Chrimes
Publisher : Mitchell Beazley
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Cambridge (England)
ISBN : 0956238211

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Cambridge by Nicholas Chrimes Pdf

Author : Joy Ellis
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2020-04
Category : Detective and mystery stories
ISBN : 1789312787

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Crime on the Fens by Joy Ellis Pdf