A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

To create the impression of an austere country church, Victorian stone flags were replaced with brick pavers for the duration of filming and the original wall paintings covered up. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited.

Reckoned by Penelope Fitzgerald to be his "masterpiece", A Month In The Country was initially published by The Harvester Press in 1980. A sensitive portrayal of the healing process that took place in the aftermath of the First World War, J. This 'New' condition hardback was published by The Folio Society circa 1999 and has an equally 'New' condition slip case.The characters are so well drawn, the atmosphere is stunning — almost dreamlike at times — and the writing sublime. Birkin gets himself quite deeply involved in the local community, in particular making friends with the Ellerbeck family, stalwarts of local Methodism. He worked for a year as an unqualified teacher — one of the lowest of the low in English education — at Blake notes that the style chosen was intended to complement and contrast recordings of classical music during particular scenes: Verdi's Quattro pezzi sacri was used during the uncovering of the mediaeval mural and a flashback montage of the First World War which opened the film used an excerpt from Schubert's Deutsche Messe (D. A pastoral, this is a beautifully written novella full of descriptions of the countryside at the last point of the horse age, before farming became an industry like any other.

There is another theme, probably the moral centre of the novel: Birkin is married, but his wife has gone off with another man, as she has a habit of doing. A Month in the Country” is a beautifully written exploration of the human spirit’s capacity for resilience and the enduring power of art to heal and inspire. Tom Birkin is still suffering the after-effects of shell-shock as a result of his experiences at Passchendaele.Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost. Birkin becomes accepted into the Nonconformist family of the station master, Mr Ellerbeck, whom he dines with on Sundays; the hospitality of the chapel congregation is contrasted against the established church, which has consigned the penniless Birkin to sleep in the church belfry. Hermione Lee was president of Wolfson College, Oxford from 2008 to 2017 and founding director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps.