The team
Ruth Harrison
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor
- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray
- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
Other teams
Flora Thompson: published poet Find!
Flora Thompson View image is the author of 'Lark Rise to Candleford', recently popularised through a major television series. She worked in the post office in Grayshott, east Hampshire just before 1900, alias the fictional 'Heatherley', aptly named for the purple carpeted commons and wooded valleys in the area. She moved to Liphook, also in the east of the county in 1916 and started the 'Peverel Society', a postal writers circle. They issued 'The Peverel Monthly' to members in which Flora included her own poetry. Before the publication of her 'Lark Rise' biographical writings and her 'Peverel Papers' Flora Thompson was a published poet. 'Bog-Myrtle and Peat' was published in 1921 by Philip Allen & Co. My thanks go to John Owen Smith, historian and writer, who lives in Headley Down, Hampshire and keeps the memory of Flora's work alive through a series of publications and lectures.
In her poetry Flora cites the landscape of Hampshire, indeed it forms a key theme. In 'Home Thoughts from the Desert', echoing Robert Browning's famous poem, Flora conjures up images of nature during a storm, looking from sandy downs at Bratley in the New Forest over a tumultuous sea towards the distant Isle of Wight. In nostalgia and reverie the last stanza reads ~
Amidst the desert sand and heat,
I hear the wheeling seabirds scream,
Scent the good smoke of burning peat,
Then wake and find but a dream -
Ah, Hampshire dear!
Readers can enjoy Flora's verse at John Owen Smith's informative website. But to provide a flavour here's 'August Again' in which she celebrates the landscape around Weavers Down and surrounding hills near Liphook.
THE heather flings her purple robe
Once more upon the hill;
Beneath a shivering aspen-tree
My Love lies cold and still;--
Ah, very deep my Love must sleep,
On that far Flemish plain,
If he does not know that the heath-bells blow
On the Hampshire hills again!
O, other maids take other men,
And just a passing sigh
Will not disturb the lightest dream;
But my poor heart would die
If so very deep my Love should sleep
Beneath his foreign tree,
That he did not stir at the thought of her
Who could love so faithfully!
3 August 2009 from Angela Hicken
Finds
- A Daughter of Winchester
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Postscrpt to a previous find
- The uses of a detective
- Reading Detectives film
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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