Hill, Archie: The Second Meadow

Hill, Archie: The Second Meadow

£65.00

Hill, Archie: The Second Meadow

SKU 7481 Category

Description

Hutchinson 1st 1982
tall 8vo, inscr to fep, crsing + tr to rear of d/w o/w F/VG++ 245 gms
(Order reference 7481).

For three months Archie Hill did what we have all dreamed of – he turned his back on civilization and, with the minimum support of a gun and a tent, refused all human contact and lived rough in the woods. This extraordinary book documents that experience in all its hardship and richness – for in the process Archie Hill saw the whole world with a fresh eye. He communicates his insights in strikingly vivid prose which has the qualities and inspiration of poetry.

Reviewing the radio programme The Second Meadow, Jonathan Raban wrote: 'With a gun, a storm lantern, a bar of soap … he really is like a boy determined to keep those shades of the prison house from closing in on him again … The Second Meadow is about that experience and prisoners everywhere (especially the millions of us who haven't even realised we are prisoners) have a lot to learn from Archie Hill.

'His prosestyle … is like a poacher's net, thrown out to catch as much as it can of experience on the wing. Every paragraph bulges with perceptions, some of them obvious, some of them gleamingly new. More than anything else, Hill's writing communicates his enormous excitement in just looking at, smelling, listening to and thinking about the world he lives in. If he's notably immodest about society, he makes up for it by being humble before life. Reading him or hearing him talk, you quickly catch that deeper modesty, an invincible capacity for wonder'.

 

Additional information

Weight 0.35 kg