Introduction by John Gregory, illustrated, pp. 105, paperback, Henry Williamson Society, 1993

 
ISBN: 978-1-873507-03-2

Pen and Plough collects a further twenty-one scripts of the broadcast talks given by Williamson between 1936 and 1967. Ten of these were broadcast only in the BBC’s Empire Service (forerunner of its renowned World Service), and concern the countryside and farming – the BBC called them ‘nice, pleasant, dreamy talks, to make people homesick for England’. A further four talks are about Williamson’s ongoing struggle to bring life back to the derelict farm in North Norfolk that he had bought in 1937, while one of the later broadcasts has the intriguing title ‘On Seeing Marilyn Monroe’. There is a separate section of talks on books and writers, including broadcasts on R. D. Blackmore’s famous Exmoor novel Lorna Doone, and the novelist Arnold Bennett.

This companion volume to Spring Days in Devon completes all HW’s surviving BBC radio scripts.