THE LITTLE GREY MEN

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Cruel Giant Grum is a human gamekeeper who kills any animal that enters his wood. The gnomes witness his death in the first book. Although BB was 65 when he wrote to me, The Little Grey Men is subtitled ‘A Story for the Young at Heart’, and this is what he was. In 1975 The Little Grey Men was adapted into a 10-part animated series called Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry by Anglia Television in the U.K. Brendon Chase was dramatised into a 13-part series by Southern Television in 1980. a b "Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry". BFI Film & TV Database. British Film Institute. Retrieved 2010-05-13. Sorry to dwell on the point, but I think it’s worth discussing the problems inherent in nature writing, even today where there’s a tendency to greenwash social/cultural/national problems in some orgasmic dreamcloud of language, fetishising ‘Nature’.

Dodder- "the eldest and wisest of the three, was the shortest in stature, but that was because he had a wooden leg...His beard was a beauty, it hung below his belt, almost to his knees, and would have been snow white if he had not dyed it with walnut juice... Unlike the others, Dodder wore a coat and breeches of batskin, with the ears left on. He drew this almost over his head in cold weather, so that he looked like a very curious elongated bat without wings." Now for a very brief glimpse into Denys Watkins-Pitchford's biography, he was born in Lamport, Northamptonshire as the second son of the Reverend Walter Watkins-Pitchford and his wife, Edith. Denys' elder brother Engel (which means Angel in German) died at the age of thirteen, and since Denys was himself considered to be of rather delicate health as a child, he was educated at home (while his younger brother Roger was sent away to school), with Denys therefore spending much of his time out-of-doors, wandering through the fields, developing a massive and all encompassing love of and appreciation for the English countryside, and which naturally also then massively and all encompassingly influenced Deny Watkins-Pitchford's writing (and his artwork). This quote, so apt for his works, has sometimes been thought to have been another one of 'BB'’s creations but it was in fact copied from a tombstone in a north-country churchyard by his father. [ citation needed] Adaptations of his works [ edit ]The Little Grey Men is charming and old-fashioned (with all that implies), a mini-adventure for us but a hardy expedition for the gnomes that undertake the journey. Will they achieve their goal or will it all end in disaster, not least from the prying eyes of Giants? The gnomes decide that they have to turn home before winter really sets in. By the time they approach Oak Pool again it is snowing. When they round the corner of the Folly and set eyes on their house they notice that someone has lit a fire! Who could it be!? The gnomes have the greatest thrill of the whole adventure when the door opens and there, waving frantically, was Cloudberry! He looked just the same as when he left Oak Pool two years before, though perhaps a little thinner. The plot, involving three gnomes who set off upstream in search of a fourth who went a-questing two years earlier, is thoroughly wrapped in rhapsodic descriptions of bird song and nodding wildflowers, bubbling waters, breezes and storms, grassy pastures, the pleasures of angling, and nature observed from ground level. . . . [F]ans of Wind in the Willows will feel right at home. . . . The story winds down to a happy twist at the end. Given patient listeners, this Carnegie Medal–winner makes a leisurely but finally engaging read-aloud.”— Kirkus According to Wikipedia, Denys (James) Watkins-Pitchford, who was awarded the 1942 Carnegie Medal for his landscape inspired fairytale novel The Little Grey Men (about the last gnomes of England searching for their absconded brother Couldberry, and for which he used the Pseudonym B.B. as both author and illustrator), he was a British author, illustrator and naturalist (who lived from 1905 until 1990). A few literary analogies suggest themselves. First, we are introduced to a model boat called the Jeanie Deans, named after a steadfast character in a Walter Scott novel. In truth several vessels were named after her, including a paddle steamer which saw action as a minesweeper during the war, with which 'BB' might have been familiar from the news; the model in this book, commandeered at one stage by the gnomes, is not in fact a paddle steamer, however.

Although the gnomes may be imaginary beings (I'm not entirely prepared to cede that point), the world they inhabit is very real and described in straightforward but eloquent language. The author is intimately connected to the countryside in a way most of us have lost--not just as observed beauty but as an intimate companion. Such narratives overwhelm me with longing to "return" to something that lives deep in our imaginations, something close to us but always just out of reach--in a word, Arcadia.

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Cloudberry is a boastful and rebellious loner who often leaves the group to explore the forest. He is on good terms with the greylag geese of Spitzbergen known as the hounds of heaven. Denys Watkins-Pitchford was born in Lamport, Northamptonshire on the 25th July 1905. He was the second son of the Revd. Walter Watkins-Pitchford and his wife, Edith. His elder brother, Engel, died at the age of thirteen. Denys was himself considered to be delicate as a child, and because of this was educated at home, while his younger twin, Roger, was sent away to school. He spent a great deal of time on his own, wandering through the fields, and developed a love of the outdoors, which was to influence his writing. He had a great love of the outdoors and enjoyed hunting, fishing and drawing, all these things were to influence his writing greatly. At the age of fifteen, he left home and went to study at the Northampton School of Art. He won several prizes while there, but was irked by the dry, academic approach, and longed to be able to draw from life. My least favorite part is the middle section in Crow Wood with the Giant Grum. The whole story has a distinct Wind in the Willows flavor and so the god Pan appears in this story too. But I didn't like the wood setting as much as they confront their enemy (a human!). The wood is supposed to feel grim because of Giant Grum so B.B. pulls that off well, but I didn't like the claustrophobic feel of it. I loved the journey along the river so much more with its openness and the lilt of the river and friendliness of the animals, even though there is danger on the river as well. The plot, involving three gnomes who set off upstream in search of a fourth who went a-questing two years earlier, is thoroughly wrapped in rhapsodic descriptions of bird song and nodding wildflowers, bubbling waters, breezes and storms, grassy pastures, the pleasures of angling, and nature observed from ground level. . . . [F]ans of Wind in the Willows will feel right at home.... The story winds down to a happy twist at the end. Given patient listeners, this Carnegie Medal–winner makes a leisurely but finally engaging read-aloud. Though it’s a little galling to discover that I am not the only person who thinks that 1941’s [Carnegie Medal] winner, The Little Grey Men by BB, is a terrifically moving elegy for an England now almost extinct, it is gladdening in the extreme to know that other people have also been beguiled by the beauty of a meticulously observed countryside inhabited by gnomes with a passion for pipe-smoking.”—Olivia Laing, “In Praise of the Carnegie Medal,” The Guardian

It's glorious writing, beyond writing really, more of a window into a lost world, lost to me anyway -- how it would be to live in a hollow of an oak tree on the side of a creek in a woodland of the English Midlands in a long ago pre-suburbanized countryside. Still, I shouldn’t be too surprised to find this this kind of content in early-20th century nature writing. You can see it in the works of other favourites. In ‘H is for Hawk’, for example, Helen Macdonald points out the fascistic ideology in beloved classics like ‘Tarka the Otter’. My favourite example is Melissa Harrison’s treatment of anti-Semitism and nativism in the English countryside in the run up to the Great War, in her truly incredible book ‘All Among the Barley’ (read it, read it now). A whimsical classic of talking gnomes and magical woods for fans of The Wind in the Willows from a British Carnegie Medal recipient

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The trouble is, it's very much a book of it's time, and it displays a lot of the characteristics and views of that time. The benign tolerance of foreigners, who, if they step out of line are ridiculed and castigated for the fact they are foreign and consequently less entitled to respect and tolerance (I refer, of course, not to people but to animals like the red squirrel, who, if you're not aware, adversely impacted the indigenous population of grey squirrels by the anti-social behaviour of being better able to surive - being better able to store food over a wider area, amongst other things); the condescending sexism - women can't be trusted with anything mechanical; and the glorification of animal cruelty (ok, that one's a bit tentative, I admit, but it leaves a bad taste when a seven year old boy is given the brush of a fox as a glorified memento following a fox hunt). THE depredations of humans is a persistent theme in BB’s writings; the heroes of The Little Grey Men are the last gnomes in England because of pollution from sheep dip. In its sequel, there is a poignant reference to how badgers have largely escaped harm from humans because they have rarely come into conflict with them and their interests. The Revd Ian Tattum is Vicar of St Barnabas’s, Southfields, Priest-in-Charge of St John the Divine, Earlsfield, and Area Dean of Wandsworth, in south London. This week, he spoke at Land Lines: British Nature Writing, 1789-2014.

The story finishes with Dodder producing a shell of his precious Elderberry 1905 wine and lots of high revelry and fun being enjoyed by all the Stream People who could squeeze into their tiny little house! For The Little Grey Men, published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1942, BB won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [1] This author's Arcadia is not so very long ago nor so very far away. It is a very British sort of place, one that may be inhabited by yeoman humans but in which the gentry are destructive intruders. The focus is on the animals and other creatures who live around the humans, their joys and sorrows. They face very real dangers, and, warning to sensitive readers: this is a darker story than The Wind in the Willows, a place where very bad things can happen and sometimes do. There is a certain amount of improbable serendipity, as befits a children's book, but the overall impression is of a story well grounded in reality. If one accepts the proposition that gnomes exist, all the rest is believable. The housekeeper told us that the previous summer BB’s wife Cecily, his emotional mainstay, had died prematurely after being enveloped in pesticides sprayed by the neighbouring farmer. He himself died sixteen years later, in 1990, flying away like his wild goose weather-vane just before my first child was born. Watkins-Pitchford won the 1942 Carnegie Medal recognising The Little Grey Men as the year's best children's book by a British subject. [4]