Dorothy Riley

The place and the people are inseparable. This is the theme of this charmingly written history in which the author entertains us with the history of her family roots and heritage going back to the Middle Ages. The family hail from a Yorkshire village called Bramley. Concentrating on the nineteenth century, the author introduces each family member, taking George Riley as the central figure. She places the stories, mainly handed down by word of mouth, in a distant world - the world of the cottage woollen industry, outside WCs and the Workhouse. People were poor and many members of the local brass band relied on their share of the earnings to make up their meagre wages. It is easy to imagine the family characters the author brings to life...

Дата выхода: январь 2005

Are people today greatly different from those of fifty or a hundred years ago? asks the author of Villagers. These eighteen short stories are set in the England of the 1880s to the 1950s, in a fictional community that has its own trade rivalries, committee-room struggles, romantic attachments, follies and forlorn hopes, delights and dark secrets. Many of these tales from our rural past are based on fact - on the author`s own family experiences - and many have the beat of Britain`s industrial heart in the background. Near the village are canals, coal barges, mills, the tentacles of industry and the hum of the local city. Indeed, the last story, `Something Very Special`, with its clang of trams and vivid portrayal of back-to-back housing,...

Дата выхода: январь 2010