Perch Hill

by Adam Nicolson

Book Overview

The Smell of Summer Grass is based partly on the long out of print 'Perch Hill'. It is the story of the years spent in finding and building a personal Arcadia, sometimes a dream, sometimes a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007335571
• ISBN13: 9780007335572
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

In search of Arcadia

Adam Nicolson is the owner of the Shiants, a trio of small, uninhabited islands inherited from his father, and which lie in the Minch, that stretch of ocean between the Scottish Isle of Skye and the Outer Hebrides. No more peaceful place can be imagined, as Adam described in his book SEA ROOM. So, it's a bit of a surprise that Nicolson, yearning to escape the soul-numbing and claustrophobic sterility of city living, must seek spiritual renewal somewhere else. In PERCH HILL, that place is a semi-derelict farm on 90 acres that he and his wife purchase in the Sussex hills between the villages of Burwash (on the A265) and Brightling (some 2 miles to the south), within walking distance of Bateman's, once Rudyard Kipling's country home, and perhaps 12 miles northwest of Hastings. As with any narrative by a British expatriate recounting life in a new and unfamiliar place, whether it be Tuscany, Andalusia, Provence, the Italian Riviera, or, well, the south of England, Nicolson entertains the reader with tales of ordinary vicissitudes. In Adam's case, it's the squabbles with a neighbor over an access road and utility lines, the turmoil of landscaping and building remodeling, the practical difficulties of raising chickens and sheep, the latter especially during lambing season, and the problematic eradication of the brambles and thistles that tend to overrun perfectly good fields. Perhaps the funniest chapter revolves around the diplomatic skills required for compromise when Adam is chosen to be one of three judges to award prizes for the best booths at a local fair. On a deeper level, Nicolson considers the philosophical implications of trying to improve the condition of Perch Hill without losing the Arcadian essence of what he was looking for when he purchased the property in the first place, all the while bemoaning the fact that other owners of non or barely profitable small farms in the shire can sell out for exorbitant fortunes to moneyed dilettantes from the Big City that have no intention of carrying on with local custom. As Adam says, it might as well be Connecticut. Nicolson is perhaps at his best and most lyrical when he dwells on the simple pleasures of the land that can be experienced on a summer day. At one point he and his dog lie prostrate in the grass of Slip Field: "A slight wind started the field nodding and other butterflies cruised and flickered in. A pale tortoiseshell hung for a minute on the vetches, followed by a bumblebee which pushed its entire body inside the blooms. A big cabbage white flirted with the nettles and the balsam at the top of the field and then two brown moths, each the size of a fingernail, came dancing in a woven spiral across the hillside, as close in with each other, as bound to and as mobile with each other as the different parts of a guttering flame. ... A thin but unending river of feathery willow-seeds was blowing out of the wood, on past me and down towards Bateman's and Burwash. Here and there a thistle