📖 Book Review ~ The Autumn Valley: A Different Sort of Time by Miriam Darlington

Candlestick Press
August 2025

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this pamphlet 

 

Round a bend at the end of a deep lane where trees “lean in over the track” we find ourselves in a hidden Gloucestershire valley. This richly lyrical essay by leading naturalist brings us owls and wrens, hibernating ladybirds and an old orchard where windfall crab apples melt into the soft earth.

Humans and animals alike are hunkering down ready for the cold season ahead. Tasks such as sweeping leaves and clearing gutters are woven into the parallel rhythms of the natural world, so that indoors and outdoors are brought into intimate harmony:

“Another dusk. Rain-mist muffles everything, softens the valley’s curves. It’s a different sort of time here. Leaf-slip time, brown and gold and copper leaves, of whitebeam, beech, alder. A churring comes from somewhere. A deer barks, and the night becomes creaturely again, breathes at the lit windows.”

Written with loving attention to the lives of plants, insects and animals, these words are best enjoyed by a blazing fire or curled up in a favourite armchair after the curtains have been drawn

Poems by Ronnie Goodyer and Stanley Plumly. 

Cover illustration by Simon Palmer.

📖 My Review..

I woke this morning to the beauty of a day shrouded in mist which reminded me that, as we come to the end of September, we are heading into the true sense of autumn. I can think of no better reminder of the pleasure of my favourite season than by reading this beautiful pamphlet which evokes such a sense of quiet autumn days.

Evocative of the change of the season The Autumn Valley: A Different Sort of Time takes us on a special journey into the author’s surroundings as she describes, in such lovely detail, the place she calls home. 

“ At night it becomes a small place in a big darkness…”

I am envious of the peace and tranquillity she finds in the ancient timbers of her house and yet through the beauty of her words I can walk beside her as she describes the natural wonder of the life she has and of her discoveries in the surrounding valley. 

“ The path leads through the fallen leaves and thistle heads and into the woods. The sound of our footfall accumulates in the leaf litter…”

So beautifully written and gently reminiscent of a quieter world and one we too could find for ourselves if we just take a moment to stop, look and listen. Go and find a woodland, stand for a moment and feel the silent companionship of tiny creatures, or the gentle sigh of an oak leaf as it flutters to the ground. Autumn magic is there in the small corners of the natural world.

The two poems which start and end the book capture the mood perfectly:

From Off A Side Road Near Staunton by Stanley Plumly

Some nothing afternoon, no-one anywhere,

an early autumn stillness in the air…

From From the Teign Valley by Ronnie Goodyer

In our cottages , the fruit wine holds the sun

you are barefoot in the stream that thunders the valley

and I am slumped under the old willow, watching you.

The beautifully designed cover opens a peek into gentle world. The Autumn Valley: A Different Sort of Time is definitely something to treasure and would make the perfect gift instead of a card for anyone who loves the autumn season, or for a birthday, or anniversary, which may fall during this special time of year.

About the Publisher 

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Mountains, Clouds, Walking, Birds, Wine and Happiness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online.

Twitter/X @poetrycandle#TheAutumnValley

Blue Sky @candlestickpress.bsky.social

Website 

Sunday WW1 Remembered ...

Richard Aldington

1892 - 1962

Field Manoeuvres

The long autumn grass under my body

Soaks my clothes with its dew;

Where my knees press into the ground

I can feel the damp earth.

In my nostrils is the smell of the crushed grass,

Wet pine-cones and bark.

Through the great bronze pine trunks

Glitters a silver segment of road.

Interminable squadrons of silver and blue horses

Pace in long ranks the blank fields of heaven.

There is no sound;

The wind hisses gently through the pine needles;

The flutter of a finch's wings about my head

Is like distant thunder,

And the shrill cry of a mosquito

Sounds loud and close.

I am 'to fire at the enemy column

After it has passed' -

But my obsolete rifle, loaded with 'blank',

Lies untouched before me,

My spirit follows after the gliding clouds,

And my lips murmur of the mother of beauty

Standing breast-high, in golden broom

Among the blue pine-woods!

'Richard' Aldington christened Edward Godfree Aldington was an English writer and poet . He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on July 8, 1892. At an early age, he moved with his mother, Jesse May, and father, middle-class lawyer Albert Edward Aldington, to Dover. There he grew up with his sister Margery and attended preparatory schools, after which he studied for four years at Dover College.

Aldington was commissioned as a second Lieutenant  in the Royal Sussex Regiment and served on the Western Front, 1916-1918

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Review ~ Autumn, Edited by Melissa Harrison

Elliot &Thompson
2016

There's something rather special about these beautifully expressive little books which look at the changing of the seasons in terms of articles, poems and general observations, all of which combine to celebrate this most glorious of seasons.It's one of those books which you can pick up at whim and find something which brings to life the colour and the fruitfulness of Autumn.

It could be the starkness of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind or the simplicity of Thomas Hardy's Last Week in October or even the glorious beauty of William Butler Yeats' poem The Wild Swans at Coole which catch your attention, as they did mine, or you could find that the crisp prose of talented writers, so beautifully expressed, is your favourite, but what is absolutely guaranteed is that whatever appeals to you, be it prose or poetry, there really is something for everyone contained within its 198 pages.

My absolute favourite observation comes from freelance writer Louise Baker whose beautifully written piece encapsulates all that is glorious about Autumn..." Autumn is the crunch of leaves as they scatter underfoot; it's the rustles, rattles and whispers of a woodland walk, and the wind whipping through bare branches and heaped foliage.."

Sharp and crisp with occasional touches of melancholy, this is a perfect read for the Autumn season.

As always the anthology is beautifully edited and introduced by its editor, Melissa Harrison.

There are other seasons already published, with the exception of Winter which is due out on the 20th October.

      

My review of Summer can be found by clicking here

About the Editor

Melissa Harrison is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in South London with her husband, Anthony, and rescue dog Scout. She was the winner of the John Muir Trust’s ‘Wild Writing’ Award in 2010, and blogs about urban wildlife atwww.talesofthecity.co.uk.

My thanks to Alison at Elliot & Thompson for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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