GAMEKEEPERS have had a mixed press over the years, in no way helped by DH Lawrence’s controversial novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where a member of the servant class enjoys a dangerous liaison with the landowner’s wife. The era of Mellors and his laconic lyricism, however, is long gone, as is the entrenched social chasm between the ordinary man in tweeds and gaiters with cocked gun on his arm, and the red-coated huntsman or stag hunter who, at day’s end, leaves the gralloching and gutting to lesser mortals. Today’s keepers are professionals, trained in conservation and land management. They might come from the upper echelons, or from the inner city, but most likely hail from somewhere in between. Whatever their provenance, the countryside is in their blood, and at the moment, that blood is at boiling point.
. . . are you reading now?
James Rebanks marvellous and moving English Pastoral, along with Ayad Akhtar s Homeland Elegies, perhaps the best American novel I ve read in several years. A sort of Muslim Philip Roth, Akhtar anatomises how the U.S. for some decades, with its rising inequality and growing injustice, the world s most successful Third-World country finally came to be so unsuccessful.
. . . would you take to a desert island?
When asked to name his favourite three novels, William Faulkner replied: Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina. As Anna Karenina contains multitudes of other novels, all also called Anna Karenina, I can think of none better as a go-to book for a desert island.