Review of ‘Discovering Derbyshire's White Peak’, by Tom Bates
This review is by Julie Bunting, and was published originally in
The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper,
on 20th August 2001, and is reproduced with Julie's kind permission.
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DISCOVERING DERBYSHIRE'S WHITE PEAK
by Tom Bates
ISBN 1-901587-11-8 (2001)
This is one of those rare books in which the author succeeds in putting your
own feelings and thoughts into the written word. Anyone with a deep
appreciation of the White Peak - surely all who have ever set foot in its
lovely limestone villages or followed its paths and roads - will be able to
close their eyes and picture one scene after the other.
Author Tom Bates takes exuberant and contagious pleasure in his literary
tour, encompassing a couple of dozen villages on and off the glorious
Limestone Way and gathering en route those snippets which come only through
chatting with the locals. Little escapes his curiosity and he branches off
into lesser-known regions, literally and otherwise, to tell us many a good
yarn. Such random snippets include the old market town which boasts a Bloody
Bones Barn, a village where royal refugees found a welcome after the 1917
Russian Revolution and another village which has a connection with the
MacDougal family of flour fame. Better still, the book creates a permanent
record of places as they are today, with tributes to village shops, pubs,
restaurants and tearooms. |
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Not only has Tom Bates given himself plenty of time to walk and talk but he
draws on other skills too, bringing scenes to life with poetry, prose and
personal recollections. He is also responsible for producing the fine
selection of a hundred unique photographs used for illustration. Here is a
writer who has a skill for conveying his own delight in the tranquillity,
the sense of remoteness from urban civilisation, and the unique and ruggedly
handsome character of our wonderful White Peak.
Review by Julie Bunting
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