Agricultural History Review, Volume 67 Part 2 (2019), p. 324

The recent resurgence of interest in nature writing has led to greater critical attention being paid to earlier examples of the genre. This increase in popularity is evident in the reissue of some classic works and the establishment of small, independent publishers such as Little Toller Books, who specialize in writing that focuses on rural life. In this context, Richard Hawking’s new study of the English rural writer Adrian Bell is a timely contribution to revived discussions of past nature writing, as well as drawing deserved attention to one of Britain’s keenest observers of rural life.

Born in London in 1901, Adrian Bell left his urban upbringing behind him in 1920 to become an apprentice farmer in Suffolk. His subsequent books detailing this move from city to countryside were highly popular, with the success of his now classic rural trilogy – Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry tree (1932) – reflecting the desire of an increasingly urban readership to reconnect with the land. Bell was not alone in his interests in country life. The inter-war period was one of increased preoccupation with rural affairs, with metropolitan-based intellectuals such as T. S. Eliot pronouncing on issues such as soil erosion and farming methods from their London offices. The ‘Back to the Land’ ethos, however, was no short-lived fad for Bell, but a central philosophy that shaped the core of his life and writing. It is the strength of this lifelong commitment to farming and rural life, Hawking argues, that makes Adrian Bell an authentic voice on the British countryside.

For the environmental historian, Bell offers a valuable account from the perspective of a farmer of the factors that contributed to the decline of British agriculture in the twentieth century and with it rural communities. For Hawking, Bell is an authoritative commentator on British agriculture because unlike other writers he quickly moved beyond a purely aesthetic appreciation of the countryside to recognize the complexities and hardships of rural life and the challenges brought by mechanization. Despite Bell’s occasional sentimentalism in his writing, Hawking argues that he was pragmatic in recognizing the benefits of modern farming techniques and the need to adapt traditional methods to meet new demands. His clear-sighted analysis of the impact of mechanization, government policy and urbanization on farming recognizes the benefits of modernization and the potential for nostalgia to distort the realities of farming life. However, as Hawking makes clear, Bell’s sensitive analysis of the impact of technological advances on agricultural work also warns against the losses caused by the capitalization of the countryside. For example, whilst accepting that machinery often eases farmers’ lives, Bell also mourns the increased sense of distance from the land and the loss of intimacy and creativity in farming that the old tools and methods had preserved. For Bell, such changes reflected a broader distancing between humans and nature in contemporary life.

Richard Hawking is a sympathetic guide to Bell’s writing and a clear supporter of his philosophy, showing him to be a knowledgeable and important commentator on rural affairs in the mid-twentieth century. Hawking’s study of Bell achieves a successful balance between detailing Bell’s life and the broader historical context that shaped his farming and writing. The result is a study that is equally enlightening on Bell’s literary achievements and the experience of modern farming. However, as in much nature writing, Bell’s work is based on an underlying assumption of the moral and cultural superiority of country life that goes unchallenged by the study. Such anti-urban narratives risk deepening divisions between town and country rather than recognizing interconnections between them. They also fail to show awareness of the negative social experiences of country life for marginalized groups and individuals that drew many to the greater freedoms, opportunities and anonymity of the city. Such considerations are necessary if nature writing is to achieve a better understanding of urbanization and the social dynamics of rural communities.

Whilst Bell remained concerned with changes to agriculture throughout his life, Hawking finds his later work to be marked by a more reflective tone in his consideration of time, nature and human relations. Hawking suggests that the decline of Bell’s popularity in the 1960s reflects a broader fall in interest in rural literature from a post-war population looking to the future and modernity rather than to the past. This disinterest is now being reversed as environmental concerns increase. In the contemporary context, Adrian Bell’s foresight regarding nature, farming and environmental affairs makes him an important contributor to environmental debates. Bell’s core argument that farming methods must maintain balance between old and modern, human and nature, producer and consumer resonates in the age of the Anthropocene, with its greater awareness of the impact of humans on the earth.

Richard Hawking’s study provides an extremely informative and accessible introduction to Adrian Bell’s writing and the period in which he lived and worked. For Hawking, Bell is ‘one of our best documentary historians of rural life, describing and contextualizing the seismic shift in agriculture that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century’. Importantly, the study recognizes the many ways in which his lived experience of farming and nature can continue to inform contemporary understanding of the importance of balancing government policy, economic demand and environmental well-being. Bell’s support for an approach to farming that incorporates modern technology when it benefits both the land and the people working on it is directly relevant to contemporary moves towards greater crop diversity, locally sourced foods and organic farming methods. Occupying the position of farmer and writer in equal measure, Bell provides an excellent example of the interconnections between culture and nature, and shows how literature can encourage greater engagement with the natural world that sustains us.