Review of ‘Echoes of The Dales, the 70s’, by Ron Duggins

This review is by Julie Bunting, and was published originally in The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper, and is reproduced with Julie's kind permission.

Dales photographer Ron Duggins has selected a tantalisingly broad choice of more than 170 photographs from his 1970s output to compile this, the third in his series of events, people and (alphabetically arranged) places in the Derbyshire Dales. Whatever and wherever the news over the past decades, Ron was given the nod. He was a familiar face at mine rescues, was invariably on hand to record spectacular incidents involving runaway lorries, and could be counted on to capture exclusives, not least the student with his arm stuck in an unlikely place and puzzled Matlock firemen in attendance, or the Winster man who took a very long walk in bare feet, or the royal personage caught out just when he thought he had dodged the 'gentlemen of the press'.

Readers are sure to recognise familiar faces - including those of celebrities and perhaps even their own - amongst the many hundreds of Dales folk seen going about their everyday lives, high days and holidays, social gatherings and sports events. A brief cast might include a village's last blacksmith, a unicyclist or two, the chap who bought a Rolls Royce while saving up to buy a suit, and the businessman who famously challenged the law with a ruse involving carrots.

Ron Duggins captured practically everything that made news in and around the Dales, whether hot on the heels of bank robbers, the completion of the Ashford bypass or the end of the line for a telephone exchange. Needless to say, he was at Wembley when a certain football team did rather well, the scenes of jubilation quite rightly allocated six pages of photographs here and now.

Review by Julie Bunting