Slow Strokes
East Anglia, By Doreen Wallace. (Batafnrd, Se. ed.)
Reviewed by BERYL MANTHORPE ENGLAND'S eastern country is a land
apart and all too little known. Not that the inhabitants care if modern highbrows do call them "slow strokes," for they have evolved their own philosophical way of life apart from a troubled world. "Hunting," says Miss Wallace, " in East Anglia is more trouble than it is worth." " No," says the Suffolk huntsman, "bad. hunting but great fun."
rsERTAINLY one wants to visit the •••• places so attractively described and photographed, but there are points in this book which jar on the Catholic reader. East Anglia is a land rich in local saints. No mention is made of them. Walsingham is passed over with a scarcely veiled sneer and there is a complete confusion of Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic. When writing about Ely the author debates how such a barren place, as it once was, supported a great religious foundation, ignoring the fact that the monks first reclaimed and cultivated the waste.
Again, well known people like Margery Kernpe, of King's Lynn, are omitted completely, and certain entrancing places such as the churches of West Lynn and South Creke (near Walsingham) are apparently unknown to Mrs Rash. Oh! and the City of Norwich has 152 churches and 365 pubs, so they say. Miss Wallace only counted 35 churches.
I conclude with a characteristic East
Anglian criticism, dursn't flc this book but she've done it a sigh, lu-lter nor I could."