You can take the man out of the city, but is the countryside ready for him? Comedian and born and bred townie, Tony Hawks is not afraid of a challenge - or indeed a good bet. He's hitchhiked round Ireland with a fridge and taken on the Moldovan football team at tennis, one by one. Now the time has come for his greatest gamble yet - turning his back on comfortable city life to move to the wilds of the West Country. With his partner Fran in tow and their first child on the way, he embraces the rituals of village life with often absurd and hilarious results, introducing us to an ensemble of eclectic characters along the way. One minute he's taking part in a calamitous tractor run, the next he's chairing a village meeting, but of course he still finds time for one last solo adventure before fatherhood arrives - cycling coast to coast with a mini pig called Titch. In the epic battle of man vs countryside, who will win out?
The collected trilogy of Tim Pears's spellbinding chronicle of love, exile and belonging in a world on the brink of change THE HORSEMAN A beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 'A novel that is as moving and profound as it is evocative of the landscape and period' Observer THE WANDERERS Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in pre-First World War Devon and Cornwall 'Goodness, Tim Pears writes beautifully ... The descriptions of rural life, executed with painterly exactness, are a constant delight. The prose really sings' Mail on Sunday THE REDEEMED A love divided. A world torn in two. A return. A redemption. 'Exemplary, a feat of perception and description that earns him a place among a pantheon that stretches from Thomas Hardy to Flora Thompson' Guardian
Numberless stories of the little Ancient People of England’s West Country of Cornwall and Devon used to be told. In olden times cottagers often repeated to each other on winter evenings as they sat round the peat fires, and some of these Enys Tregarthen has retold 13 of the most enduring in this illustrated volume. The Legends in this volume are: The Adventures of a Piskey in Search of his Laugh The Legend of the Padstow Doombar The Little Cake-bird The Impounded Crows The Piskeys’ Revenge The Old Sky Woman Reefy, Reefy Rum The Little Horses and Horsemen of Padstow How Jan Brewer was Piskey-laden The Small People’s Fair The Piskeys who did Aunt Betsy’s Work The Piskeys who Carried their Beds The Fairy Whirlwind Piskeys, or Pixies, danced in their rings on many a cliff and wild moor on moonlit nights in North and East Cornwall. Fairy horsemen, known locally as night-riders, used to steal horses from farmers’ stables and ride them over the moors untill daybreak, when they left them exhausted, and to find their own way back to their stalls. The legends about the Little People are very old, and some assert to-day that the tales about the Piskeys are tales of a Pigmy race who inhabited Cornwall in the Neolithic Period, and that they are answerable for most of the legends of our Cornish fairies. If this be so, the older stories are legends of the little Stone Men. The West Country legends of the Little People are numerous. Some of them are very fragmentary; but they are none they are hugely entertaining and give an insight into the world of the little Ancient People, but they also show how strongly the Cornish peasantry once believed in them, as perhaps they still do. For, strange as it may seem in these matter-of-fact days, there are people still living who not only hold that there are Piskeys, but say they have actually seen them! These stories are given to the world in the hope that many besides children, for whom they are specially written, will find them interesting, and all lovers of folk-lore will be grateful to know that the iron horse and other modern inventions have not yet succeeded in driving away the Small People, nor in banishing the weird legends from our loved ‘land of haunting charm.’ 10% of the publisher’s profit from the sale from this book will be donated to Charities. ============= KEYWORDS: folklore, fairy, Tales, children, stories, bedtime, fables, illustrated, myths, legends, Adventures of a Piskey, Search, Laugh, Laughter, Legend, Padstow Doombar, Little, Cake-bird, Impounded, Crows, Piskeys’ Revenge, Old Sky Woman, Reefy, Rum, Little Horses, Horsemen of Padstow, Jan Brewer, Piskey-laden, Small People, Fair, Aunt Betsy, Work, carry, Carried, Beds, Fairy Whirlwind, Plymouth, Exeter, Torquay, Paignton, Exmouth, Barnstaple, Newton Abbot, Tiverton, Brixham, Bideford, Falmouth, Penzance, Camborne, Newquay, St Austell, Truro, Essa, Bodmin, bodmin moor, Rough Tor, Siblyback Lake, De Lank River, Garrow Tor, St Neots, King Arthur's Hall, Kilmar Tor, Hawk's Tor, Bude, St Austell, St Ives, Newquay, Jamaica Inn, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Fingle Bridge, Gara Point, Upper Plym, Trowlesworthy Tor, Heddon Valley, Mount St. Michael, St Michael's Mount, Marazion
Three novels in one volume featuring a police detective dealing with the darker side of Devon, England. This trio of crime novels starring Dan Hellier includes: Death in the Woods DI Dan Hellier has returned to Exeter under a cloud. But a chance for redemption comes when the body of a talented young singer is found in the woods. When links are revealed to a recording studio boss, a predatory gang, and a school music teacher, Hellier has to untangle a web of lies, and find out who silenced a singer forever. Death on Dartmoor When an amateur archaeologist makes an unusual find, she calls the local college. But this discovery—two headless, handless bodies in a bog—doesn’t require a professor but the police. DI Dan Hellier isn’t sure how to identify the victims when nobody has reported them missing. And the tension mounts when the death of a young man plunges Hellier into a murky mystery linked to a local family and an animal-rescue operation… Death on the Coast A homeless man has been beaten and thrown into a fire on the beach. To make things worse for DCI Dan Hellier, images of the crime are all over social media—and there’s more to come. To find a bitter, brutal killer before he strikes again, Hellier must identify a secretive cult and a story that goes back decades to the time of the Irish Troubles. Death in the Woods was previously published as Death and Deception, and Death on Dartmoor was previously published as Death and The Good Son, both under the name B.A. Steadman.
Previous works have concentrated on the 'Pal' in Britain's northern towns and cities. This book seeks to explore the little appreciated part in the Battle of the Somme played by the Regular and Volunteer Service battalions of two small West Country regiments; the Devonshire Regiment and the Dorset Regiment. These two regiments had five battalions in action on the first day of the battle and were represented in most of the significant attacks during the three and half months of the 1916. The reader will be able to form a clear picture of the battle's development as a whole through the eyes of Westcountry soldiers who fought on the Somme.
Hidden behind the picturesque facade of country lanes and rugged coastlines, quaint villages and busy market towns, the South West counties of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset have witnessed some of the most shocking murder cases in British history. West Country Murders brings together over 30 cases from the authors' previous collections here in one volume. They include stories of those who killed for greed, jealousy and lust, as well as those who committed murder in what a well-known judge once described as 'a gust of passion'. Some of the killers were undoubtedly insane at the time of their crimes; others were almost certainly innocent, yet paid the ultimate price for a murder they did not commit. Some remain unsolved to this day, despite the best efforts of the local constabularies. This book is sure to appeal to all those interested in the shady side of the West Country's history.
