In 1960 David St John Thomas, then a journalist, co-founded the publishing house David and Charles, which made a distinctive mark on British publishing. David and Charles – his business partner was Charles Hadfield – produced numerous books that recorded much of what is best about traditional rural Britain.
Largely from running the business Thomas came to know and befriend a seemingly endless list of writers, small publishers and booksellers throughout the country, as well as the towns and villages where they lived, worked and got their inspiration.
In 2000 he set off on a series of journeys to revisit many of these people and places, recording his observations in this weighty, 700-page tome, Journey Through Britain. It is, he says, a “personal attempt to show how my Britain hangs together, what makes it such a treasure.”
Securing the National Heritage
Not everything is to his liking. Newton Abbot, where the David and Charles offices were based, “seems to have lost its impetus and direction.” Perth, not far from Thomas’ adopted home in Scotland, has “the most oversized, ugliest station in Britain.” And he frets about some modern developments, like the four-lane A30 highway that cuts across the northern edge of Dartmoor in Devon and the rapid decline of the coastal fishing industry. Chelmsford is a “great sprawling jungle of houses, roads and supermarkets.”
But for the most part Thomas likes what he sees. He paints a picture of a still largely unspoiled countryside and coastline and finds promising signs of preservation, revival and adaptation to the realities of modern life. The National Parks and National Trust have secured the future of much of the nation’s heritage while also making it more accessible.
National Cycle Network
The National Cycle Network, under development throughout the country by Sustrans, is “one of the most ambitious transport schemes ever.” It has enabled more people to use the routes of some closed and abandoned railways than were ever carried on them as train passengers.
The Lake District, “our best-loved landscape,” retains its magic, as does Fowey, or “Q Town” and “John Betjeman country” in Cornwall. Lindisfarne, an island seen from the train off the Northumberland coast, is still “the gem of the East Coast Main Line.”
The drive along “Britain’s most enjoyable minor road,” 60 miles from Drumrunie to the Kylesku Bridge in northwest Scotland, is little changed from when Thomas first saw it in the 1960s. The early chapters describe a cruise around the Hebridean islands in the Spring of 2000, where the stunning scenery gave Thomas the idea of writing the book in the first place.
The Wisdom of Taxi Drivers
Thomas says “you cannot really know Britain without its taxi drivers’ view,” and reports on the wit, wisdom and local expertise of several of them. But most of the people he meets are from the world of books, educated, articulate and thoughtful. And several of them are famous.
There is the astronomer Patrick Moore in Sussex, Rick Stein, the restaurateur and television chef who has almost single-handedly boomed the coastal town of Padstow in Cornwall, and Jeremy Thorpe, former MP for North Devon and leader of the Liberal Party, who Thomas knew when he served as chairman of the West Country Liberals.
Journey Through Britain is full of historical background and literary allusions as well as the author’s own observations and musings. It is, as he says, a very personal account of the Britain that he knows. “I set out loving Britain. I end the book loving it more deeply,” he says in the Preface. Those ready to lose themselves in his world and share his informed and optimistic views will find it an excellent read.
Journey Through Britain, by David St John Thomas, published by Frances Lincoln, 2004, 700 pages, ISBN 0 7112 2369 6
Paul Lightfoot - I lived and worked in Asia for many years, managing and monitoring rural development projects for a living and using that experience to ...
