Robert Ashton writes:
When he was 70 years old, Suffolk writer and oral historian George Ewart Evans wrote and narrated the BBC film ‘A Writer’s Suffolk’ which was first broadcast in 1980. He was already an established author of books on rural life, with the best known, Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay, published some 24 years earlier. That book, the first of thirteen, contained the stories his Blaxhall neighbours told him of how life had been when they were growing up in the early years of the 20th century.
I am also now 70 years old and March saw the publication of the paperback edition of my book Where are the Fellows who Cut the Hay. I launched it at Framlingham, just eight miles from Blaxhall, with a screening of ‘A Writer’s Suffolk.’ My book, which was longlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize and shortlisted for the East Anglian New Angle Prize, shows how life in rural Suffolk has continued to evolved since Evans wrote Ask the Fellows. I met and told the stories of grandchildren of those Evans interviewed, and people who today are bringing back traditions that were all but lost.
‘A Writer’s Suffolk’ neatly bisects the span between the publication of Ask the Fellows and of my book Where are the Fellows. In it Evans visits Roger Clark, who farmed with Suffolk Punch horses, and also the Hollesley Bay borstal where he explains the therapeutic value of horses to troubled young offenders. He also visits Claas at Saxham, where he talks about the impact of technology on farming and Lime Tree Farm Blaxhall, where he watches a 175hp John Deere in action and talks about the danger of soil compaction and our increasing reliance of oil. Evans was in many ways ahead of his time, rooted in old Suffolk, and a keen observer of the change taking place around him.
I met Evans wife, and his wife was headmistress when I was a pupil at Needham Market primary school. I worked on farms near Blaxhall in my teens, spent 10 years selling fertilizer, married a farmer’s daughter and first read Ask the Fellows more than 50 years ago. My paperback launch has been as much an opportunity to celebrate the work of George Ewart Evans as it is to celebrate my own journey as a writer, following in his footsteps.
Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay?
£10.99
Robert Ashton
SHORTLISTED: New Angle Prize
LONGLISTED: Wainwright Prize
‘Essential reading for anybody who wants to understand rural life’ Patrick Galbraith
Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay? is an ode to rural life, charting traditions of the past, how they were lost and why we need to reconnect.
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