A Lakeland Boyhood

Description

Runner up in the 2021 Lakeland Book of the Year Award

David Clark has always believed the Lake District is a special place. His memoirs of the forties and fifties give a unique insight into a thriving rural community of working people which is now long gone. His warm style brings to life his happy years growing up in a family struggling to make ends meet; including facing eviction, which made a lasting impression on him. Working on the land meant the family lived close to nature and he learned the names of all the local flora and fauna.
He rejected a job on a farm for one in forestry. Fifty years later he became chairman of the Forestry Commission. After going to university as a mature student, in 1970 he was elected to Parliament where he spent almost fifty years including a spell in the Cabinet as well as being dubbed the ‘first green MP’. Later he led the successful campaign for World Heritage Status for the Lake District.
The author maintains that those early years of difficulty and freedom shaped his approach to life. He never forgot the experiences and injustices, he simply set about putting matters right.This book is more than nostalgic recollections and once you have read it the Lake District will never seem quite the same again.

The Lake District is a wonderful place to live as well as visit. Only just over forty thousand of us are residents and we welcome nineteen million visitors each year who come to enjoy its beauty. We understand why they come, after all we have chosen to live here. Its appeal is universal.
However, it wasn’t always viewed in this light. Before Wordsworth, Daniel Defoe in his tour of Britain between 1724-6, described the area as, “…the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England.”
Since then opinions have changed as has the landscape itself – at the hands of man. The reality is that the beauty of Lakeland is shaped by nature and then moulded by human activities. The sheep and cattle farmers of the uplands cleared the scrub trees and opened up the fells to grazing, providing humans with inspirational views and the freedomto roam at will.
The Lake District is a wonderful place to live as well as visit. Only just over forty thousand of us are residents and we welcome nineteen million visitors each year who come to enjoy its beauty. We understand why they come, after all we have chosen to live here. Its appeal is universal.

Reviews:

The House magazine, December 2020: In this beguiling and delightfully elegiac book the author looks back to his childhood and youth in his beloved Lakeland, dedicating it, rather movingly, to his parents “whose beliefs and determination made it possible.” He was born just after the outbreak of the Second World War, in October 1939 in a small cottage without electricity or running water, just north of the border. Both his parents had Cumbrian roots and in the bitter witer of 1946/7 David was told they would be moving back to Cumbria. They did so in April of that year, while the legacy of that bitter winter still lay all around. In his childhood he fell in love with the natural world around him and the seeds of “the first ‘Green’ MP” were sown. Nothing particularly dramatic happened but he is adept at evoking the atmosphere of one of the most glorious parts of England in the rather dark, depressing and worrying post-War years, but years that resonate with him as the government, of which his parents were great supporters, began to tackle the social problems of the day and to lay the foundations for a welfare state.

But although politics is always in the background, it is the Lake District that is his inspiration. He writes nostalgically of living through the seasons, of his grammar school days, and of his early devotion to the church. He did not go from school to university but took a post as a laboratory attendant at the Freshwater Biological Association near Ambleside. But academic achievements lay ahead and when, in 1970 and at the age of 31, he entered the Commons he was already Dr David Clark and throughout a long and successful political career he remained true to his Lakeland roots. So it was as Lord Clark of Windermere that he entered the House of Lords. This is an inspiring account of a politician of whom it could truly be said “the child is father to the man”.

Conserving Lakeland, Autumn 2020: David Clark, Lord Clark of Windermere, is a well and variously known as a Labour politician, Chairman of the Forestry Commission, or the man who led the Lake District’s successful bid for World Heritage Status.

A Lakeland Boyhood reveals David’s early life, and although anyone from the Bowness area will recognise many people, places and events, it will strike a chord with those who grew up at the same time, remembering values and attitudes commonly held then. It is a reminder of the strength of local communities, and David considers the changes that these communities have undergone. Younger readers may wonder at the ways of living and working, the harder work and simpler pleasures, and that cycling hasn’t always been a lycra-clad leisure activity. For many it was the only way to school, work or social activities.

Many memories made me smile, including his time working on a pig farm and a conversation with the Queen, but we can now see where and how David acquired the experience, principles and beliefs that have shaped and underpinned his successful life. Review by Douglas Chalmers.