Alfred listed among West Country's finest writers
Alfred Williams rubs shoulders with the likes of Thomas Hardy and Daphne du Maurier in a new book by John Payne called The West Country: A Cultural History, published by Signal Books (£12 in paperback).
The book takes a wide-ranging look at the culture of the West Country, starting in Wiltshire and taking in all the counties to the south-west.
Alfred appears in the chapter on Wiltshire, and his life and work receives detailed analysis in a section headed Williams on the Plain.
John makes the obvious comparison with Richard Jefferies, and highly praises both, especially Life in a Railway Factory, which he says is "one of the first and best accounts of the realities of industrial time and discipline".
He also draws favourable comparisons between Alfred's 'villages' books and characterisation in Lark Rise To Candleford, and says it is fitting that Alfred is presented alongside household names such as Hardy.
John, who was born in Bath but now lives in Frome, told the society: "Swindon has chosen (so far) not to give due honour to these two great writers. Swindon sees itself as a working town, a manufacturing town. That is all well and good, but if we compare, say, the way that Stoke-on-Trent has honoured Arnold Bennett (author of Anna of the Five Towns) or the strong local following in the Nottingham area for D H Lawrence, born into a mining family in the pit village of Eastwood, it is just not good enough. Swindon should be proud of these two great men and do its best to promote their work."
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