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Billy Bragg, fRoots Magazine
A wonderful book for aficionados and sceptics alike.
Professor Ronald Hutton
The research is admirable: he really has done his work very well.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hey nonny nonny,
By Glossopswift (Derbys, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Magic Spring: My Year Learning to be English (Paperback)
Lewis made me laugh out loud and that'll do for me. Imagine a Louis Theroux or Danny Wallace character wandering England looking for those ancient English customs that we hear so much about but tend to ignore. Why do we proudly fly the cross of St. George on our car and shout from high our rekindled pride in Englishness but feel too embarrassed to sing a folk song or go morris dancing? Lewis doesn't simply observe these customs (together with sun worshipping, straw bear following, tree talking) - he joins in to try and find the English spirit within him, something to connect him to his English forefathers. Lewis' conclusions are perhaps disappointing for those looking to find the link between the mists of ancient time and the customs of today but a boon to those looking to have fun, drink ale and throw off the embarrassment of singing ta-loo-ra-loo-ra-lye and waving a hankie about. Don't show your English pride by singing anti-Irish/Scottish/Welsh songs - show it by learning an old ballad or two and sing it in the pub to the accompaniment of a melodeon. Better still - get this book, order yourself a pint of warm real ale and settle back for a very amusing read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and full of empathy,
By Louise the book worm (Kent, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Magic Spring: My Year Learning to be English (Hardcover)
My first thoughts were, 'oh no, young media savvy bloke seeks to score points against easy target', and I found myself looking for the sarcasm, the opportunistic folk-knocking. But the book was much better, much more thoughtful and interesting, and deserved a kinder eye than that. Richard Lewis is "English Bloke", and attempts to get to the bottom of English folklore through a much closer acquaintance with folk music, traditions and festivals than he ever thought he'd need. His crucial 'in' is that he plays music. It's his passport to a hidden, slightly secretive, and definitely unappreciated, English counter-culture. It's sort of a travelogue, and sort of a history of folklore and folk music, and it's event got traces of the self-revelatory 'I was blind but now I see' transformative account, but what redeems it from being too specifically, and inadequately, any of those things, is that he is - or at any rate becomes - sincere about the events, and the people, he's writing about. Highlights were his descripton of himself in the hobby horse festival in Gloucester (I think?!), and his hysterical descriptions of the gurning contest in Cumbria. He also includes a concise and very intelligent critique about Jane Austen's narrow England.
He's not the most charismatic writer, sometimes too journalistic, not lyrical enough; but at times he creates sad and beautiful images which have stuck with me ever since. I didn't necessarily come away with a bundle of firm, well drawn conclusions, but I did emerge with more knowledge, and certainly more understanding, of a culture I have probably affected to despise in the past. Never again. That said, I've never yet read a writer who can translate music to the written page in a way that reflects my actual experience of it, and Lewis is no different: he almost had me believing in the intrinsic merit of the variety of different tunes played by Morris dancers, until I stood at the Sweeps Festival in Rochester myself, shortly after reading this book, ready, willing, determined to be impressed - and heard tune after tune cranked out excrutiatingly on a hundred different accordions, each sounding so much alike that they may as well have been one single, endless, tedious tune. It hasn't converted me, but I was impressed with the journey - a labour of love.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A grand tour of the meaning of being English,
By
This review is from: The Magic Spring: My Year Learning to be English (Paperback)
Ricahrd Lewis hit the point in life when your realise that it is easier in the 21st Century to be from the UK and British than to be English. The Irish, Welsh and Scots have a better grip on their culture and Richard goes out to discover what it means to be English.
Via real ale, morris, mummers plays, dressing as horses, folk music and psuedo-pagan rituals he explores a year in what most would regard as a slightly quaint counter-culture. He discovers that most supposedly ancient / pagan traditions are Victorian embellishments or inventions. Clearly there have been rituals over time that may relate to Christianity, may not, may be middles ages, may stem from before the Romans - we just don't know. The book avoids drawing a conclusion, but you suspect that the modern echoes and recreations are in a real sense in the tradition of older ideas, even though form and content move on. And this is no bad thing.
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