Rufus Bramble's Countryman

From the journal · the latest page

Tuesday, 10th November 1953

The wind gone round to the south-west in the night, and rain by dinner-time that has not stopped since.

Dylan Thomas is dead, in New York, at thirty-nine. The paper gave him a column and a photograph that made him look like a man who had slept in a hedge. I have Deaths and Entrances on the shelf, bought in 1946 for the train and read on it twice. I read Fern Hill again tonight. It is about being young in a place, and not knowing that it would stop. He was three years older than me.

Read the whole page

The journal is kept day by day through 1953. Each page appears on its own date.

On the wireless

Before the Frosts

Every Monday, on Oldham Community Radio: the story of the cottage, read aloud a chapter at a time. Ten in the morning and again at five, and on Wednesdays at four.

Times and chapters · A Countryman’s Notebook, 1953

The Sunday post

A letter from the cottage every Sunday: the week’s pages from the journal, the glass, and whatever Charlie has been up to. Sign up for the Sunday post.