roger Bowen

Self-Publishing of family history is a risky business.Will the finished book be of interest to anyone else? This book certainly will. It has the same irresistible candour and integrity about it as other successful autobiographies . The main charm of the book lies in the almost verbatim reproduction of letters sent home to the country vicarage of her birth in the 1930s by a 20 year old single (but engaged ) "lady" missionary who finds herself lost like Alice in Wonderland when transported to the closed world of China. Jean Wemyss-Gorman, her daughter, has managed to select the letters which most clearly disclose detail after detail of her mother's character and beliefs- not only her unwavering trust in God but her obvious love of all that is either edible or romantic. As a real shot in the arm for a sceptical and locked down society it is not to be missed.

The best thing I have ever read on the Fens of East Anglia and South Yorkshire. I am delighted to regard myself now as a Fennish! Between the ages of 3 and 6 I lived with my grandparents in an old farmhouse on the edge of the small Yorkshire town of THORNE in the Isle of Axholme. The farm was called ASHFIELD and across the back field stretched the ridge of ASHFIELD BANK, the first flood defence planned by Vermuyden against the River Don.Every day my mother took the children up the bank and entertained us with the next instalment of the history of fen drainage. I expected Vermuyden to appear in person at any moment.He was still a household legend in 1940, loved and hated in equal measure. My childhood memories validate all that James in his book has suspected i.e. the drainage of the Fens was a massive con and the biggest manmade ecological disaster to befall the English countryside in modern times. Wendy Bowen has written this who holds an MPhil. in modern regional history! Imperial Mud is my book of the year.