Up with the Lark Audiobook By Joan Bomford cover art

Up with the Lark

My Life on the Land

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Up with the Lark

By: Joan Bomford
Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
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About this listen

Joan Bomford, BBC Countryfile's Farming Hero of 2015, has lived all her life in the lush, rolling countryside of the Vale of Evesham, where cows graze the water meadows of the River Avon and modern life seems far away.

Farming is in Joan's blood. Generations of her family have worked the land, and in Up with the Lark, Joan tells us with warmth, wit and great insight what it's been like to live through an era of such enormous change. Now aged 83, Farmer Joan is still active, making hay, feeding the farm's beef cattle, and running the riding school that she dreamed of as a child.

A natural storyteller, Joan Bomford, shares many heartwarming and magical events - like the elephant who came to stay and the gentle tricks played on the evacuees who refused to eat her mother's rabbit stew. Yet her life has not been one long rural idyll - Joan watched helplessly as her cattle were swept away in a sudden flood and witnessed the night sky alight with the German bombing of Coventry - and latterly she's had to deal with family tragedy.

Up with the Lark is a portrait of a forgotten era and a celebration of the qualities that make Joan Bomford an inspiration to us all: her passion for the land, a love of family and a determination to make the most of life.

©2015 Joan Bomford (P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton
Biographies & Memoirs Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Heartfelt
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Up With A Love For Life

I really enjoyed this gentle and loving memoir. Joan Bomford clearly loves life, her family, the land, farming and hard work. She is a capable strong woman and beautifully conveys her story to the reader. Bomford captures the joy of tinkering with machinery and the pleasure of a difficult job well done.

I found it refreshing to hear about a life where families stuck together and were kind to each other--even though they, at times, saw things differently. It seems as though people often write memoirs to express anger or how unhappy their lives have been, how mistreated they were. This book is a breath of fresh air.

The author presented a window into farm life in rural England from her earliest memories in the 1930s through her 83+ years. The stories of coping during WWII--Joan being 14 when the war ended--were evocative of the general can-do mentality of the family and the farming community around them.

Bomford is a plain talker, funny, engaging and touching in the way she portrays the people she has encountered in her long full life. How great it was as a reader to meet a person who knows who she is and is happy being just what she is. A positive listening experience.

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34 people found this helpful