H J Massingham, prolific writer on rural life and culture between the two world wars, had his own house built at Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire in the 1930s. He stayed there for the rest of his life, writing numerous books and engaging in copious correspondence with all manner of people. In 'Through the Wilderness' (1935) he describes his house, built on a spacious field, with wide ranging views which 'brought southern England right within my visioned walls.....the sheep and the lambs, the heifers and the cows, the magpies, larks, partridges, crows and starlings passed their time of day with me....I felt a bit like St. Jerome, without his virtue but granted his blessings.' His search for some sort of harmony with nature in the way humankind lived and his tilt against the prevailing mood of the times caused him to be regarded by some as eccentric. Yet now he is thought to be a writer who grasped the scale of the ecological disaster facing us decades before it became a mainstream concern.
.jpg)