and eventual marriage to Loreto,
the widow of his old climbing friend
and 1960s TV climbing spectacular
producer, Ian McNaught-Davis, in
2016.
In many ways, tragedy seems to
have haunted Bonington’s long and
active life. He writes movingly of
his sense of personal responsibility
for the loss of so many of his close
friends, such as Ian Clough, Mick
Burke, Nick Estcourt, Pete Boardman
and Joe Tasker, all on expeditions
which he led.
He admits that writing the book
was a challenging, introspective
exercise, as he relived the joy
and despair of a long life spent as
Britain’s foremost ambassador of the
great outdoors.
BACK ROADS THROUGH MIDDLE ENGLAND
Andrew Bibby
Gritstone Publishing, £13.95 (pb)
T
he phrase “Middle England”
has many meanings, the
most common of which is
probably as a socio-political
term referring to white middle
class people holding traditional
conservative or right-wing views.
But as the author explains in
this delightfully-different travel
book, his Middle England is “an
altogether more complicated,
and more contested, terrain.” He
travelled, by bike on quiet country
roads, the 430 miles along Prof
WG Hoskin’s “great stone belt”
of oolitic Jurassic limestone,
through ten counties from Dorset
to Humberside, trying to capture
the modern-day essence of this
essentially English landscape and
its people.
And he confirms at the end
of his journey, during which
he meets a variety of people
ranging from plain-speaking
Northamptonshire quarrymen to
the chief executive of the Blenheim
estate in Oxfordshire, that, despite
some terrible road conditions,
that the bicycle is the ideal mode
of transport if you are not in a
hurry. John Morrison’s excellent,
though virtually unacknowledged,
photographs illustrate his journey.
Bibby’s eloquent literary
companions on the eight-day
journey include Edward Thomas,
John Clare, Flora Thompson and
the relatively unknown Dorset
dialect poet William Barnes, all
of whom add life and colour to
this previously largely unheralded
landscape.
Despite its clumsy title –
which makes it sound more like
an AA motoring guide – this is a
refreshingly different kind of travel
book, not afraid to visit places
where other guidebooks fear to
tread. They include the former
steel town of Corby, Chartist
cottages near Witney, community-
run village shops in North
Cadbury and Collyweston, and an
innovative social housing estate at
Powerstock.
It all fits in perfectly with
the ethos of the publisher, the
UK’s first authors’ publishing
cooperative, and the author’s own
passion for community-based
social enterprise.
THE MASTER PHOTOGRAPHER
Bob Ryan
Bourchier Books, £24.99 (pb)
T
here’s something strangely
satisfying about taking apart
a clockwork mechanism -
a watch, for instance - to
see how the various pieces all
fit together. That satisfaction
pales in comparison to the joy of
successfully re-assembling the thing
afterwards though, particularly if
it also works more efficiently than
it did previously. Bob Ryan’s new
book, The Master Photographer: The
Journey from Good to Great, invites
and encourages you to try a similar
tinkering with your photography
skills.
This is not a simple how-do-you-
do-that photography book, filled with
technical explanations readily found
elsewhere. It’s a book that wants to
push you from being merely a good
photographer to becoming a great
one. The main way to achieve this
according to Ryan is to unlearn bad
photographic habits and embrace
your photographic intuition. To
reinforce this message, Ryan writes
about his own personal experience
as a photographer, as well as
presenting information gleaned from
a variety of sources, including areas
of academic study such as human
psychology. (Though this does not
mean that the book is a dry read, far
from it).
Once past the introduction, the
first task presented in the book is the
completion - as honestly as possible
- of a downloadable personal
scorecard. Once complete you are
then free to work syst ematically
through the rest the book, taking
a series of exercises to chart your
progress along the way.
The ultimate aim is to reach the
final chapter having learnt to trust
your intuition in order to shoot more
emotionally pleasing and compelling
imagery.
The Master Photographer
is relatively text-heavy for a
photography book, but it does cover
a lot of of ground over its 139 pages.
What photography there is is varied
and relevent, and includes work by
Ryan, as well as photographers such
as Andy Beel and Alison Price.
If you feel the need to improve
your photography then reading
Ryan’s book will be time well spent.
On the subject of which, can anyone
recommend a good watch repairer?
David Taylor
winter 2017 | Outdoor focus 7