MobileRead Forums - Other Non-Fiction Thomas, Edward: In Pursuit of Spring. v1. 2 Apr 2013

Edward Thomas is a writer regarded as a War Poet, largely because he was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917, shortly after he first arrived to fight in France.

He is perhaps best known for the poem "Adlestrop", but as he puts it himself in the opening paragraph of this book:

THIS is the record of a journey from London to the Quantock Hills — to Nether Stowey, Kilve, Crowcombe, and West Bagborough, to the high point where the Taunton-Bridgwater road tops the hills and shows all Exmoor behind, all the Mendips before, and upon the left the sea, and Wales very far off. It was a journey on or with a bicycle. The season was Easter, a March Easter.

He sees a vanishing world with a poet's eye: he made the journey between March 21st and March 28th 1913, the last full year of peace before August 1914 changed the world for ever. More prosaically, the route he takes is described in sufficient detail to make it possible to trace the roads he took and see what has changed and what is still the same. And even the weather will be familiar to spring cyclists in England - far too much rain.