KESWICK: Miscellanies and bedside books thrive at this time of the year and very useful they are too as presents - but a “Farmer’s Bedside Book,” surely this is something different? It is very difficult at first for anyone living in this hard, north-western corner of England to put farmers and bedside books in the same bracket but, on further examination, this one (“Farmer’s Bedside Book,” published by Countrywise Books, 21s, and taken from 10 years of the “Farmers’ Weekly”) is found to be aimed more at people interested in the countryside and in many - usually the lighter - sides of farming rather than at the farmers themselves. Let us see then what is offered.
There is much solid sense on topics varying from the menace mute swans have become in some districts since the 1954 (Protection of Birds) Act to the ways of weasels, the types of British deer, and even to the varieties and food plants of British butterflies. This last is a topic very close to the heart of any country-goer in these days of pesticides and diminishing, wild lands. The gardening and plant-lore sections have a nostalgic, rather old-fashioned ring but are none the worse for that, and if you would like to know how to make a dewpond, to learn about black or white magic in the Welsh hills, or to candy borage flowers this is your sort of book. Sometimes, and here speaks the hard-bitten Cumbrian no doubt, the farming anecdotes seem a little unreal, but there is much to amuse here during the dark winter evenings and, after all, it is well that some books should inform a little and amuse a lot. The photographs, from a sleeping kitten in a boot to a scarecrow stark against bare trees, are excellent.
