THE VILLAGE NEWS
TOM FORT SIMON & SCHUSTER, £14.99, HB
In this meditation on that most quintessentially English phenomenon, the archetypal village, Tom Fort shows us that there really is no such thing, except for the fantasy idyll that catches the last golden rays of sunset in our imagination.
Much ink has been employed over the years to articulate a picture-postcard vision of the village, its beautiful thatched cottages, mowed green, duck pond, brigh-red postbox and adjacent telephone kiosk. Various authors shored up this image of Bucolica in the 20th century, WG Hoskins and HV Morton among them, insisting it should be preserved at all costs.
But Fort thinks that they have missed the point entirely, a charge he also levels at modern planning departments and anyone else intent on preserving the picturesque in aspic for its own sake.
Fort visits over 20 villages the length and breadth of England and illustrates his key points vividly by telling the stories of villagers at turning points in the community’s history. While recognising that villages have died through the ages and will inevitably continue to do so, the prevailing view that ‘the village’ as an institution is dying is given short shrift. Villages need an engaged community and just as that community will inevitably look different from what has gone before, incumbent villagers have to recognise the need for growth in ways that may challenge their ideas of what that growth looks like.
An entertaining book, written with Fort’s characteristic conversational style. A real pleasure to read some things that needed writing. Ian Vince