He was almost entirely self-taught, producing his most famous work, Life in a Railway Factory (1915), in his spare time after completing a gruelling day’s work in Swindon. Henrietta, a loving but shy girl and her bedridden mother; Piglet, a baby who is very curious; Dr Hardy, the cold hearted doctor and last but not least, Moth, the brave and beautiful “witch” but is she really a witch or is she just hiding something? If you have kids, this is a great place to explore with them as there are metal signs mounted around encouraging you to walk the Brislington Brook Trails and create crayon rubbings of the plaques.

My favourite character was Moth because if you looked at her you would think she is a scary witch, but once you get to know her, she turns out to be a really nice, kind and loving woman! She did not promote herself, and was indifferent to the attractions of public life: "I'm not shy", she told Oliver, "I'm just unsociable". She found the writing overblown and the plotting ridiculous, [25] and decided that her own first novel would be a comic parody of the genre. The ending was breath-taking and reduced me to tears of joy and bliss, the hardships of Henry paid off. In 1947 he appeared in the original run of the Vivian Ellis musical Bless the Bride, and made several further stage appearances in the following two years.A pretty town on the River Uck in Wealden, East Sussex, Uckfield has much to offer, including several beauty spots and nature reserves such as West Park, Nightingale Wood and Hempstead Meadows.

Stella's grandfather, Charles Preston Gibbons, was a civil engineer who spent long periods in South Africa building bridges. Gibbons was delighted with the suggestion, and the work was published as Cold Comfort Farm in September 1932. In November she began a series of articles, "A Woman's Diary of the War", for St Martin's Review, the journal of the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Employment opportunities grew with the Honda UK car factory, warehousing and retail parks that form the west and northern edges of the parish.Irthlingborough Lakes and Meadows - At the heart of the Nene Valley, Irthlingborough Lakes and Meadows is an internationally important wetland and stop-over for thousands of wildfowl and waders. He paid for a substantial renovation of the Church, commemorated on a brass plaque in the Church – this explains the date of 1885 on the church clock. To continue the approach of ‘greening the village’, a Neighbourhood Plan was developed and approved by referendum in 2017. Lee tells how Keats’s evocation of a nightingale singing outside his window on Hampstead Heath is widely disparaged, not least by DH Lawrence and John Clare.