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Shire Reeve

By
MV
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This year’s High Sheriff of Dorset, George Streatfeild, has lifted the role out of the doldrums of a pandemic to keep it relevant. He spoke to Fergus Byrne.

At the end of 2001, in an article in this magazine, George Streatfeild described the previous year as an ‘annus horribilis’ for farming. A build-up of various economic pressures; a number of food scares; Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and the devastating outbreak of foot and mouth disease—not to mention growing environmental concerns—had made farming harder than ever.
Nineteen years later, running Denhay Farms in Broadoak, George is now two-thirds of the way through his year as High Sheriff of Dorset. One might expect him to describe 2020 in the same terms as he did all those years ago. After all, as the county’s representative of the Monarch, he might simply be echoing a term that the Queen herself has used on more than one occasion.
However, despite COVID-19’s interruption of his expected duties, George is not only philosophical about how the pandemic has impacted on his schedule; he is also determined to keep the role relevant.
Speaking from his home in Broadoak he summarised his role: ‘It’s not a traditional year, and definitely the job is not as advertised, but it is highly rewarding. All the standard invitations have gone by the board. I went to County Hall for the remembrance event and I think that was the fourth official engagement I’ve had this year—as opposed to about the 104th. All those have gone. But on the other hand, I’ve met some amazing people and talked to some fantastic charities and individuals doing wonderful things for their communities. And these are people I would not necessarily have come across had I been doing the traditional High Sheriff bit.’
The traditional role of High Sheriff has changed somewhat since the days when he would have been expected to collect taxes; judge court cases; pursue felons or even raise an army to support the Sovereign of the day. It wasn’t necessarily a popular job and to ensure the person chosen didn’t try to avoid taking the post, their name was highlighted by pricking a hole on vellum so the mark could not be erased. It is an unpaid job and in those days if the High Sheriff didn’t manage to collect sufficient taxes for the crown, he had to make up the shortfall himself. Thankfully, those tasks were gradually allocated to different departments of government throughout the centuries and today the job is mostly ceremonial.
However, George points out three things that he believes keep the job relevant, not only in general but especially in the middle of a pandemic.
The first thing he can do is say thank you, explained George. ‘And that’s not a small thing, because I’m not saying it as George Streatfeild, I’m saying it as High Sheriff who is the Monarch’s appointee. So, for example, if I go to the food bank in Bridport and say thank you for what you are doing, that is, if you like, with the Queen sitting on my shoulder.’
The second thing he can do is publicise the person or organisation that he is meeting and help more people to know they exist. ‘It’s very important that the role of High Sheriff is not seen as a personal role but one that allows you to highlight other people.’
The third thing that the role allows George to do is to bring groups together. Often he has talked with organisations and found that there were ways they could work together on similar initiatives and be more effective. ‘One of the things this year that has been stunning is that people have been prepared to communicate. Whether its neighbours or charities, in order to deliver what they need to deliver they have had to work together. It’s been good to try and help that process. I feel that all the High Sheriffs have done that quite well.’
Between lockdowns, George met with a wide range of charities and community organisations around the county helping to highlight the work that they are doing. As High Sheriff, he is entitled to give a special award to someone in the community that he feels deserves recognition. He made a recent surprise appearance on stage during the Bridport Literary Festival at the Electric Palace in Bridport to present an award to Tanya Bruce-Lockhart for all the work she has done in Bridport and Beaminster over the years.
However, George has taken the award aspect of his job a step further. ‘This year I came up with the concept of the High Sheriff’s Community Award’ he explained. ‘I’ve given out about thirty of these to organisations or charities or groups who I think have done fabulously well during the lockdown in support of their communities.’ He has presented these awards to organisations all around the county. In a whirlwind of visits, food banks in Beaminster, Christchurch, Bournemouth and Bridport; charities in Poundbury, Sherborne and Poole; community stores and restaurants in Haselbury Bryan and Weymouth, along with many other organisations and individuals around the county have been recognised and thanked by the High Sheriff.
He hopes to present members of some of these charities to people that may be able to further highlight their work at a future event. ‘There is a huge number of us in the county who do not know what’s happening down in the weeds’ he says. ‘And when you talk to people at the coal face of what’s happening, it’s quite instructive.’
One of the other key roles of his job is to take an active interest in the criminal justice system. ‘The role of the High Sheriff is you represent the Queen’s interests in the county, particularly criminal justice’ says George. ‘So I talk to the police and prisons, probations, courts, fire and rescue and all those organisations. And then I deal with charities that are trying to help people rehabilitate back into society. And the other area is charities that are preventing people from getting into the criminal justice system in the first place. And that is a massive group of organisations.’
In many towns and even villages around the county, a national drug distribution network known as County Lines has often made headlines. It is a huge issue for parents of teenagers and has affected even younger children as well. Young people are ‘groomed’ by older youths and adults and lured into becoming drug users and distributors. George believes the local police are very much ‘on it’ but also has concerns about those that may be influencing or unconsciously encouraging the system. He has challenged the police on what they are doing about what he describes as the middle-aged, middle-class people who take cocaine as a recreational drug. ‘That is the start of the chain’ he says. ‘If middle-class people stopped using cocaine as a recreational drug it would have a massive impact on the whole thing.’
These are some of the aspects of the role of High Sheriff that allow the job to be more meaningful rather than simply ceremonial. With its own uniform of black or dark blue velvet coat with cut-steel buttons, breeches and shoes with cut-steel buckles, it speaks of an ancient British tradition and George takes great pride in that. But he has hopes beyond the tradition and ceremony. ‘I do hope that it will be a defining year’ he says. ‘I do hope that we will develop the relevance to the modern world alongside those traditional bits. I’m a traditionalist through and through, but I also realise it’s got to be relevant to young people today. If it isn’t we’re on a hiding to nothing.’

To learn more about George’s year as High Sheriff and about the many charities and local initiatives he has met visit his website: http://highsheriffdorset.co.uk

Rural isolation and mental health

By
MV
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Part of our series of audio interviews, Seth Dellow talked with West Dorset MP
Chris Loder, about local mental health issues, as well as the impact of the pandemic.

In a wide-ranging interview, recorded at his Poundbury office, West Dorset MP Chris Loder cites attitudes to social responsibility and the disproportionate distribution of economic resources as causes of some of the problems faced by rural areas. The fascinating interview, part of our series on mental health throughout the wider local community, gives an interesting insight into how the softly-spoken man from Sherborne went from life as a local farmer to Member of Parliament. It also gives an insight into some of the personal challenges he has faced throughout his own life, as well as during his short time as an MP.
Speaking about the problems of loneliness and isolation faced by many in rural and farming communities, he stated how ‘shocking’ the suicide rate is and how it is a ‘cause for national embarrassment.’
Although drawn to a more national role in politics during the Brexit debate, Chris Loder had served on West Dorset District Council to represent villages to the south of Sherborne since 2013 and was Association Chairman of West Dorset Conservative Association for three and a half years until August 2019. Now in a position with much more public scrutiny and with high expectations from constituents, he hints at some of the frustrations of being a new MP and how difficult it can be to create change, especially at a time of such huge uncertainty. ‘The reality of being a member of parliament of course, is that you are here as a representative of this constituency—to hold the government to account, rather than being a government minister—and that is something that is not well understood,’ he says. ‘Regrettably, I don’t have the ability to pull a direct string and make something happen tomorrow, but I can hold others to account in doing so.’
From subjects such as his challenge to Government about what it is doing to help gay farmers, to the lack of housing to help young people stay in the South West, as well as his concerns about what can and can’t be believed about COVID-19 data, Seth Dellow’s interview with the West Dorset MP is illuminating.
‘From my interview with Chris, it was clear that rural locations, such as that of West Dorset and the surrounding areas, have individual and unique problems relating to mental health’ explained Seth. ‘Despite the seemingly challenging situation, it has been an intriguing opportunity to talk to Chris about the work he has been doing in his constituency… What has struck me most during this interview, and the others in this series, is that no one is immune to mental health issues, and reaching out for support is never a bad thing to do.’
This interview, as with all the others in the mental health series, will be available on the Marshwood Vale website, at www.marshwoodvale.com.

Listen to Part 1 of the Chris Loder interviews at the following link:
https://bit.ly/37dFO6D

The interview is in three parts which will be released over the weeks coming up to Christmas. To be alerted when new links are available, email a request to be updated to info@marshwoodvale.com.

Seth Dellow is a University of Exeter student reading History & Politics, with a keen interest in political history and public policy. Aside from academia, he is active in the local community, regularly volunteering and has won the Pride of Somerset Youth Awards twice. His experience extends to the media sector and he enjoys interviewing people from a wide range of backgrounds, often to discuss the emerging themes of the day. You can learn more about Seth at www.linkedin.com/in/sethdellow

Eric Harwood

By
Marshwood
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‘As a Scally-lad growing up round the corner from Priscilla White (aka Cilla Black) in the back-to-back terraced houses of Everton in gritty, post-war 1960s Liverpool, I never imagined I would bring my own kids up in the idyllic rolling hills of Dorset on the shores of the Jurassic Coast.
Aged five, in the Siberian Winter of 1963, our mid-Victorian terrace house was probably more like something from the 1930s. That “wicked” Winter, every house in our cobbled street had their lead pipes frozen solid: we all collected water from a stand-pipe in buckets. My mum and dad were like a Cathy Come Home couple when they married at 20 and 21. Virtually homeless, my lovely, smiley mum was an “Irish” Roman Catholic from a family of 12, my dad from a large Protestant family: no-one came to the wedding. They met in Liverpool’s Meccano toy factory in 1957 and their wedding photos only show their work-mates because both parents wouldn’t accept a “mixed-religion marriage”. We left Everton in 1970 when we moved to a council house in Knotty Ash: land of Ken Dodd, the Diddy Men and mythical jam-butty mines. By 11, I was back in Everton at The Liverpool Collegiate Grammar School. Founded by Gladstone, it was fiercely full of intellectual aspiration. I never knew how I passed the 11-plus exam, I didn’t even know I’d taken it. That door to learning and knowledge was opened wide…I was welcomed in, changing me, firing up my ambition, pushing me way beyond my humble origins. By 18, like a third-rate Beatle—Pete Best went to our school, as did Holly Johnson—I was off on a magical mystery tour…not before seeing The Clash, The Damned, The Jam and just missing The Sex Pistols in Liverpool’s iconic punk club, Eric’s.
After school, I landed a job as a trainee reporter for the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Group. This was mainly thanks to my thoughtful English teacher, Mr Pritchard who felt the mix of my “chatty, gob-on-a-stick character” and “accomplished writing skill” made me a natural journo. His faith, plus the warmth and unconditional support of my mum and dad, has fired and fuelled my 43 years in the British media. But that early working-class warmth, humour and open-heartedness remains lodged deep inside me even now.
After working as a reporter and sub-editor, I returned to education when at 22 I started an English degree at University College London. Next I became a journalist on The Daily Mirror, spending two years continually trying to get into the TV industry. Failing by each and every method, I never even got to the interview stage. Finally, my launch into telly at London Weekend Television was nothing short of miraculous.
I’m on a train from Liverpool en route to the first proper TV face-to-face interview I’ve ever had desperate to get this researcher job on a £4 million epic series called The Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald. On that train, I meet a man, whose friends actually travelled and conversed with Oswald on a long bus journey just weeks before the assassination of the President in 1963. Details of the conversation were kept in a diary, and he could give me access to them for this new programme. The jaws of my LWT interviewers dropped when I revealed this information—finally the job was mine: I was in!
That was the turning point in my ambivalent journey to becoming a fully-paid-up member of the bourgeoisie. Once at LWT, I suddenly found myself catapulted in front of the cameras as “the-lad-next-door” reporter on an innovative “pirate-TV channel” called Network 7 in 1987. It was Channel 4’s new “yoof” series, my boss was the tough-talking Janet Street-Porter and we won a BAFTA for originality. After two years travelling the Network 7 rollercoaster across the globe, I got serious and made a hard-hitting ITV film about mothers and kids with AIDS in the South Bronx. That story, as I turned 30, made me determined to make powerful, worthwhile TV in future. I set up my first TV company, Wild & Fresh Productions—an ethos I have fought hard to hold onto! In our first doc series, Summer On The Estate, we spent a year living on a tough Hackney council estate filming dozens of tenants, squatters, gang members and drug-addicts. We won an RTS Award for Best Documentary Series, but when the Minister for the Environment saw the film he came to meet the tenants and pledged he would demolish the estate. Five years later our follow-up film captured the tower blocks exploding in slow motion. For me, it was profoundly moving to help transform the environment of hundreds of decent council estate tenants thanks to a bit of telly. Rarely would I feel such a sense of purposeful vocation.
Seven years on, I was at the other end of the social spectrum: filming Princess Diana’s dresses and possessions as they returned to her family home, Althorp, just months after her tragic death in 1997. At this point, I had punched way above my social weight when Emma, a bright, beautiful BBC Arts producer from Hampstead Garden Suburb, somehow agreed to marry me at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead … and there were no objections. We moved into up-and-coming Crouch End, within a year, we had our first daughter Ella and every two years another lovely daughter turned up: Holly, then Rosie.
When Holly arrived at the Royal Free Hospital in April 1998, I raced back from Althorp where we’d been filming the world exclusive first interview with Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer. This was the first production of my new Liverpool-based TV company—BBC1’s Diana, The Princess, My Sister—the first film to show Diana’s memorial and island resting-place to the world. Shown in 200 territories it raised $2m for Diana’s charities. Oddly, at the same time, I was producing a film with screen-writer Jimmy McGovern about how 500 Liverpool Dockers were suddenly sacked and lost their jobs. Channel 4’s Dockers: Writing The Wrongs and Diana, The Princess, My Sister were two films in 1998 that marked how far I had come from the streets of Everton. Had I moved from being “the rebel outsider” to becoming dangerously “establishment”?
By the turn of the millennium, my company made what I feel was a pinnacle production: The John Lennon Night for Channel 4. On December 9, 2000, we marked what would have been John’s 60th birthday—and 20 years since his tragic death—with a 90-minute film The Real John Lennon and a live music special presented by Jools Holland from George Martin’s Air Studios in Hampstead with sets from Oasis, Stereophonics, Lou Reed, Paul Weller, Ronnie Wood, Donovan and Lonnie Donnegan. This marked a personal coming-of-age for me as, two decades earlier I had shot my own super-8 film of John’s Liverpool memorial just days after his tragic murder in 1980. A working-class hero is something to be: finally, I was beginning to understand that song.
That same year, my company and its parent Planet 24 Productions was sold to Carlton Television, so I found myself on the board of Central Television PLC, overseeing £12million of TV production from the Midlands as its new Controller of Programmes. Within four years, I fell on my sword, escaping the claustrophobia of the corporate world for ever. In August 2003, Emma and I uprooted our family from London and settled in Charmouth. We knew no-one: everything slowed, I took 6 months off, spent time with the girls (now 3, 5 and 7) and rediscovered the person trapped within the corporate carapace. Perhaps like many who recently dropped off the working hamster-wheel after lock-down, I pressed my life’s re-set button and felt re-born: walking, sea-swimming and living a present-tense life with my kids. We discovered a wonderful close-knit community of families around Charmouth Primary School and created the “Charmouth Fat Dads”—an unofficial men’s group of 40-somethings who playfully organised fun, outdoor events for families, the kids and each other. Now I realised there was another way to live.
The only work I undertook in that first year in Dorset was to help a young Geordie lad make his first film about an extraordinary character called Jonny Kennedy. The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off was shown on Channel 4 in 2004 to a stunned audience of five million. It raised almost £500,000 for charity, won 17 awards including a BAFTA, Grierson, RTS and International Emmy and was voted by Channel 4 as “the sixth best documentary ever”. Proof that returning to powerful, meaningful, human film-making was where I belonged.
Over 16 years, I’ve made many films remotely from my Dorset haven. After producing the BBC feature drama-doc Wainwright: The Man Who Loved The Lakes, it rekindled my childhood memories of The Lake District. With TV presenter Julia Bradbury, this led to eight BBC walking series including Wainwright Walks and Coast To Coast, as well as two ITV series of Britain’s Best Walks—including the Colmer’s Hill & Golden Cap walk—still repeated now. With my current company, Heart & Soul Films, we shot the Ming Dynasty Great Wall of China from the Yellow Sea to the Gobi Desert for our BBC4 film—A Slow Odyssey: The Great Wall of China.
I feel privileged to walk this wonderful land, travel the globe and come back to Dorset to edit my adventures. But what I’ve learnt is that my family is my best production ever… it’s them I am most proud of: Ella, 24, working in Paris fashion; Holly, 22, getting a First at LSE in Politics & International Relations and Rosie, 20, studying Politics at King’s College Cambridge and my ever-patient, clever wife Emma, an accomplished therapist, tutor and counsellor for young people in West Dorset. As the song says… “I’m a lucky man”.’

Up Front 12/20

By
Marshwood
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In his audio interview with Seth Dellow, West Dorset MP, Chris Loder mentions the silver linings around the upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic. He points to what he sees as a completely new approach to how communities support each other. We have all seen or heard about the broad range of acts of kindness and support shown by those around us over the last nine months. That community cooperation—so apparent during the last war—seems completely at odds with the anger and unkindness that sometimes seeps from digital forums onto the streets and national media. So much so that it’s easy to forget just how human and caring most people are. We are often told by authorities that those who wish to cause upheaval, discontent or terrorist carnage within a society—especially one trying to cope with one of the biggest disasters of our time—are in a very small minority. Looking through this issue there are many reminders of that truth. There is much to celebrate about hospitality and decency within the wider local community. George Streatfeild, as the current High Sheriff of Dorset, has been visiting charities and organisations around the county giving awards and highlighting some of those that should be thanked for their work before and during the pandemic. In an interview in this issue, he also points to the value of bringing different groups together, something that is often easier to do in the middle of a disaster. Jess Morency, in her article ‘19 Silver Linings’ features residents in her village of Piddlehinton. She talks of flower posies made for key workers; local food delivered to those in need and the opera singer who entertained the village with a half-hour concert each week. One of the younger residents, Imani, highlights the environment—a mantel that has been grasped by her generation from those that have voiced their warnings over decades. Imani echoes the often mentioned observation that lockdown and the pandemic have given many people pause for further thought about how we deal with environmental issues. Another resident says of the village: ‘people here are so good. Really, they’ve all just been marvellous.’ It’s a sentiment that has been heard in towns and villages all across the country and something that is worth remembering as we enter the darker days of a winter with challenges well beyond anything most of us have experienced. It may seem odd then to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but surely that has to be the goal.

November 2020

By
Marshwood
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Chard Watch

By
Marshwood
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Interview by Seth Dellow

Screen Time November 2020

By
MV
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And then there was one. The Plaza Dorchester, part of the Picturedrome Electric Theatre company cinema chain is still open for you to enjoy a socially distanced night out.

Soul 8.6 on IMDB and 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. All the critics love it. “Visually glorious, frequently very funny and genuinely profound, this is a picture which cries out to be seen on the big screen.” Wendy Ide. Screen Daily.
Sadly such is the tenuous nature of film releases at the moment that many of the Plaza November screenings are still to be confirmed. So check their website to see what is on https://www.plazadorchester.com/

Meanwhile, plenty to watch on the home cinema screen

Netflix
Hillbilly Elegy is an adaptation of a New York Times bestseller directed by the seasoned Hollywood director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Da Vinci Code, Apollo 13) and starring Glen Close and Amy Adams. No reviews but great cast and looks interesting.

Christmas on The Square in which Dolly Parton plays Angel. For fans of Dolly this could be a real tonic for our times. I think you will either want to watch this or run away!
Finding Jack Charlton is a moving film that celebrates not only the career of the footballer but also his last few years when he suffered from dementia. “He conquered the world, he transformed a nation, then he faced his greatest challenge,’” Gabriel Clarke, one of the film’s directors

Amazon
Rocks
“What a wonderful, heart-breaking, life-affirming gem of a movie this is.” Mark Kermode The Observer
Remarkable performance from a young cast of unknowns but above all the brilliant newcomer Bukky Bakray who plays the title roll Rocks.

BBC iPlayer Films
Ghost Stories
A British horror film starring Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse and Andy Nyman. “darn scary.” Phil de Semlyen Time Out. I don’t need to tell you any more about this! It is.

Young Lit Fix November 2020

By
MV
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Leyla by Galia Bernstein
Abrams, RRP £11.99, Ages 3+
Reviewed by Antonia Squire

When a chimpanzee named Leyla gets overwhelmed by her family she runs far, far away where she meets a lizard who teaches her how to do: Nothing.
Like me, Leyla thinks that it must be quite easy to do nothing, but the lizard shows her a special way of sitting and a special way of closing her eyes that makes the sun move across the sky without her even noticing.
When Leyla says goodbye to the lizard and runs home to her too big family of mummy, daddy, aunties and cousins she tells them all about her exciting adventure far, far away. Her family may sometimes feel too big, and they may sometimes feel too loud for little Leyla, but when it all gets to be too much she now knows how to sit, and close her eyes and just do nothing until she is ready to join the fun and games again.
With gorgeous illustrations this is an adventurous book about mindfulness, without ever mentioning the word ‘mindfulness’. Beautiful, fun and evocative, it’s a perfect addition to any family library in these uncertain times.

The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes, illustrated by Keith Robinson. Usborne Publishing, RRP £6.99, Ages 8+
Reviewed by Nicky Mathewson

I do love a good ghost story and this fast-paced tale of a girl staying in an unfamiliar, storm beaten, coastal town on All Hallow’s Eve, is deliciously creepy.
Aveline needs to stay with her aunt for a few days in the Cornish town of Malmouth which has a pretty ghostly past, what with a smuggler’s cove and all. But the Halloween tradition of making a childlike scarecrow to adorn each garden is less familiar and very unnerving.
After buying a book of ghost stories from Lieberman’s Second-Hand Books, a curious trove of many dusty tomes, she stumbles upon another girl’s fascination with ghosts. A girl from the past whose mysterious disappearance is still unexplained. Primrose Penberthy once owned this book and what’s more she kept a diary.
Using Primrose’s diary, can Aveline piece the puzzle together to determine what happened to her? More importantly, can she find out in time to save her own life?
Phil Hickes has created an electric atmosphere full of tension and suspense with a subtle nod to Daphne Du Maurier. I simply couldn’t put it down and it has become one of my firm favourites.

 

The Illustrated Child by Polly Crosby. HarperCollins, RRP £12.99, Ages 14+
Reviewed by Nicky Mathewson

To say that the old farm, Braer, is creepy would be an understatement, but for Romilly and her father it is a warm family home. Romilly’s father is an artist, whose love for her is deep but sometimes concealed. Is he negligent in his paternal duties? Perhaps, but let’s just say that he gives her a freedom and independence that would please any inquisitive child.
Is Romilly lonely? Without a doubt, but by chance she meets a girl from the village, Stacey, who could be a potential friend, but she’s always pushing Romilly to step outside her comfort zone and something about their friendship feels amiss. Then Romilly’s father has his first book published, a beautiful picture book depicting the adventures of Romilly and her kitten ‘Monty’. That isn’t all though, the book seems to hide in its pages many random clues, which apparently lead to treasure. Her father’s success is tremendous, so he publishes more, giving the books all of his time and attention. However, the intimacy of the books and the prospect of finding treasure, brings unexpected intruders to their idyll at Braer. Romilly can’t step into the garden without being confronted by strangers.
As she reaches her teenage years, the child in the book created by her ever distant father, is like a spectre that she cannot shake off. She has many needs and many questions about her absent mother, which he is unable or unwilling to answer. While others are seeking Treasure, Romilly is seeking truth. A sophisticated and enigmatic coming of age novel which is not all it seems.

A Special 10% discount for Marshwood Magazine Readers throughout November 2020 at The Bookshop on South Street, Bridport.

The Lit Fix November 2020

By
MV
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Marshwood Vale based author, Sophy Roberts, gives us her slim pickings for November

In my work as a travel writer, I’ve always been drawn to remote cultures and places. But sometimes, in searching out the places least familiar to Western dogma, I forget that the most alien cultures of all can be those we think are familiar. I, like many others, have spent the last four years wondering where everything went wrong for America. As the US presidential election looms, I’ve found myself turning to literature for hope—the classics over the contemporary (a refuge from the whirlwind of the present). This month, my slim pickings are all written by Americans. Their stories are not necessarily set in the US, but nonetheless remind me what makes America great.

The Hunters by James Salter is one of my all-time favourite books—the story of a fighter pilot in the Korean War. It’s a little long for my slim pickings, so here’s a quicker Salter read: A Sport and a Pastime. The story follows a Yale dropout, Philip Dean, as he pursues a provincial French girl. The erotic, obsessive narrative is fed through a voyeur: an older, impotent man, for whom the affair is part fantasy, part musing on the nature of relationships and romance. Interspersed with visceral sexual imagery come evocative whispers of 1960s France, with sunlight ‘falling into its alleys like fragments of china’, and ‘the blue of autumn that touches the bone’. There’s a deeper philosophy in Salter’s writing too: after all, ‘dreams… are the skeleton of all reality’.

Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams catapults the reader into the American West at the turn of the nineteenth century, tracing the life of Robert Grainier, a day labourer in Idaho’s forests. Just as Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life—which made last month’s slim pickings—conjures up a startlingly vivid picture of a changing way of life, so too does Train Dreams unpick the frontier mentality of American expansion, and the rapid changes of the twentieth century. As the narrative flows through the rare happinesses and many tragedies of Granier’s life, the spare economy of Johnson’s language lays bare the consequences of change. This is a poignant book, the noise of a train moving through a burned-out valley, ‘unable to wake this dead world’.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is about a young African-American girl, Pecola Breedlove, growing up in Ohio during the years after the Great Depression. The novel, published in 1970, deals with difficult topics including racism, poverty and sexism. With haunting, incisive prose, Morrison cuts to the heart of issues surrounding Black identity in America, with Blackness described as if one were given ‘a cloak of ugliness to wear’, with ‘every billboard, every movie, every glance’ supporting that misrepresentation.

Don’t let the narrative simplicity of Seize the Day by Saul Bellow—a single day in the life of New York-based Tommy Wilhelm—dupe you into thinking this isn’t an emotional rollercoaster. In his mid-forties, Wilhelm has been on the brink of chaos for some time: he is separated from his wife and children and temporarily living in a hotel, has a contentious relationship with his father, and is facing financial ruin. This is the day when things come to a head. As the novel hurtles towards its climax with supercharged intensity, I find myself being swept along, believing in bright beads of hope, despite inevitable despair. The lasting power of his message is tangible; we can only know the present, Bellow posits, ‘like a big, huge, giant wave—colossal, bright and beautiful’.

J.D. Salinger’s For Esmé with Love and Squalor is a short story based around a 1944 encounter between an American soldier stationed in Devon, a girl called Esmé, and her younger brother, Charles. The trio share a brief conversation; Ésme’s precocious manner and small, ‘oddly radiant’ smile enchants the soldier. He explains to Esme he is a professional short-story writer (although not yet published), and she asks him to write her a story, one ‘extremely squalid and moving’. The memory of the encounter, and a subsequent letter from Ésme, give the soldier a measure of peace as he suffers from battle fatigue in Bavaria during the weeks after VE Day. The intensely human rendering of Salinger’s characters makes a masterful impression of innocent naivety against an ugly backdrop of war and division—as much a story for our times as it was for the post-war 1950s when it was first published.

Sophy Roberts is a freelance journalist who writes about travel and culture. She writes regularly for FT Weekend, among others. Her first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia—one of The Sunday Times top five non-fiction books for summer 2020—was published in February by Doubleday.

Modern Slavery

By
MV
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Whilst slavery can be traced back to some of the world’s oldest societies and was officially abolished in the UK in 1833, its modern form is still widely practised. A specialist in civil liberties, Samantha Knights QC, will be giving a talk as part of the Exile – A Mind in Winter exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre in December. She talked to Fergus Byrne.

What is modern slavery?

Modern slavery is an umbrella term encompassing slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. Victims of modern slavery are unable to leave their situation of exploitation, controlled by threats, punishment, violence, coercion and deception. Slavery violates human rights, denying people of their right to life, freedom and security.
Examples of some of my clients’ cases include a Vietnamese boy trafficked to the UK by a Vietnamese gang and forced to work without any pay in a cannabis house; a British girl in care from an early age who became trapped into a cycle of sex and drug trafficking in Wales and England; a Lithuanian woman trafficked to the UK by a violent partner and forced into prostitution; an Indonesian woman brought to the UK as a domestic servant by wealthy Middle Eastern family and exploited, subjected to abuse and underpaid; and a Polish man based in the UK who lost his job and who became trapped in working for a small laundry business in the UK earning £10 a day for long hours of work.

How prevalent is it?

The UK is both a country of destination, with thousands of victims arriving from other countries only to be exploited by criminals; and a source country with increasing numbers of British victims identified. Slavery takes many different forms and affects adults and children, males and females.
Those who are enslaved are exploited for the financial gain of their captors. The vulnerable are made to work in cruel conditions for long hours without pay. Examples include women and girls forced into prostitution for profit, young boys made to commit criminal acts against their will and men kept in slave-like conditions in factories.
Last year 10,627 potential victims of modern slavery were referred to the National Referral Mechanism; a 52% increase from 2018. The most common type of exploitation for both adults and minors was labour exploitation. Potential victims from the UK, Albania and Vietnam were the three most common nationalities to be referred in the NRM.
Human traffickers in the UK will coerce and control their victims, keeping them in slavery for weeks, months or years at a time. Individuals are often deceived into working in slave-like conditions, and then threatened in order to keep them there. Victims are moved from abuser to abuser and they are usually too afraid of their captors to risk escape, making slavery a hidden, complex crime.
For those victims who do escape or are rescued the UK has an established system of support, namely, the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). This was introduced in 2009. The NRM provides accommodation and other vital services for victims for a minimum of 45 days. The NRM exists outside statute, and many organisations also support victims of modern slavery before, during and after exiting the NRM.
Although modern slavery can involve the movement of people across an international border, it is also possible to be a victim within one’s own country.

How is the South West affected?

There is no part of the UK which is unaffected by slavery and this includes all parts of the South West. The Bristol based NGO ‘Unseen’ was founded in 2007 with its aim to tackle slavery in the area. ‘Unseen’ in turn set up the Anti-Slavery Partnership with Avon and Somerset Police and Bristol City Council.
The organisation ‘Safer Devon’ states:
“Modern slavery and human trafficking is happening in Devon. Hotspots include the tourism and hospitality industries, nail bars and car washes. Hotels and holiday lets may be used to house people whilst they are being exploited. As a hidden crime, our knowledge of modern slavery happening locally is still developing. Everyone can do their bit to be aware of the signs and report concerns.”

What do you do?

I am a barrister at Matrix and specialise in public law and civil liberties. I have worked for many years on refugee and immigration cases and in the past four years have been working increasingly on modern slavery and trafficking cases. The cases that come to me reflect all the various types of slavery present in the UK today including trafficking for sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and labour exploitation. My clients are foreign nationals, EU citizens and British. I have represented clients who are being unlawfully detained in immigration detention centres; clients who have been wrongfully convicted of drug offences whereas they should have been recognised as a victim of trafficking and protected; clients who have been refused the status of victim of trafficking by the Home Office and thus not considered entitled to support and assistance; clients who have not been provided with support and assistance to which they are entitled as victims of trafficking by law. The cases I am involved in tend to be complex and often involve multiple government departments, local authorities, and other organisations. Most of my clients are deeply traumatised and some of them have suffered abuse from childhood in the UK. I am instructed by firms of solicitors in these cases who are specialist in this area and who themselves are working in very difficult circumstances with limited legal aid resources available.

What can people do?

Be aware and informed about the issue. Consider where you source your food, clothes and consumables from. There are numerous websites with helpful information including Anti-Slavery, Unseen, Kalayaan, Stop the Traffik, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. If you are concerned about someone, contact the Modern Slavery Helpline.

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