Bizarre Berkshire

Reviews / Votes

'Duncan Mackay has dug deep into Berkshire's murkier history, raising an eyebrow at a range of wierdness to exorcise any suspicions that the home counties might be predictable. This book grips your interest - and then continues to fire your imagination.' Lance Railton 'This is classic place-storytelling in the tradition of Herodotus (the Greek "father of history"), who knew that the truth of a place cannot be reduced to empirical historical facts ("factition"), but also is born of myths, fancy and supposedly tall stories - which may eventually prove to be not so tall after all!' Kenneth R. Olwig, Professor of Landscape Theory and History "Duncan's little book Bizarre Berkshire reveals some outstanding fragments of personal histories as well as moments in Berkshire life that have created national history. This delightful book is based in the rich seam of doubt and possibility which lies between real events and ' history' as revealed by eye witnesses or recorded by historians." Sir Michael Parkinson Lance Railton The book is constructed alphabetically - the 2500-year old Ankerwycke Yew at Runnymede, where King John signed Magna Carta (with his fingers crossed); the Bucklebury Fly (a C17th glass painting above the Winchcombe family pew in Bucklebury church); Caravanning (the retired Victorian army surgeon who invented the mobile traffic jam); Thomas Day, a C18th philantropist who hung around orphanages selecting pre-teen girls to raise as suitable wife-material (an experiment which failed, but bred the founder of NatWest); Eton (which he describes as "the Galapagos islands of private education, operating under its own peculiar evolutionary rules". G is for Ghosts, and dwells on the area around Littlewick Green, Ashley Hill and the octagonal Romano-Celtic temple at Weycock Hill, one of only three such in Britain, which is haunted by a white lady (possibly one of the Vestal Virgins who may have served it - and could be buried alive if they ceased to be the latter - ). She has been seen widely locally, including walking across the sitting room of Bertha Lamb, who in 1918 founded the Littlewick Green WI (today's keepers of the hearth and home?). Duncan also mentions a Black Dog at Feens (or Ffiennes) Farm - where confusingly an Irish wolfhound-sized White Dog was also seen around 1985-6, disappearing 'as if running behind a black sheet' - and the headless ghost of Dorcas Noble, allegedly decapitated after her attempt to restore her lover's affections through love magic failed.