Reviews for Discovery World: Korky Paul, Biography of an Illustrator

The average rating for Discovery World: Korky Paul, Biography of an Illustrator based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-01-28 00:00:00 James Stoddard This was a East End tradition that every summer the whole community would decamp to kent to help with the hop picking. I think this tradition virtually died out by the 60's when farms became more mechanized and the trend for drinking european beers , which depended on a different type of hops. This book was based on the memories of former hop pickers, it was actually more of a holiday and change of scenery for the women and children as not many men took part unless they were unemployed as you obviously had to leave your job for the summer. Kids were taken out of school and old clothes and bedding collected all the year round to take to kent. The wages were not very high and it was very hard work. The same families went every year and were allowed to leave their possessions in the sheds which were their homes for the summer, although living conditions were very bad, the author does point out that probably conditions at home were virtually the same. It would have been interesting to get the point of view of the locals who had to put up with a huge influx of Londoners every year and how it effected their lives. I also found the author tended to analyze the collection of data and how oral history is collected too much. At the end is a quick biography of the women who took part, but as the storytellers were only referred to by their initials and you actually never got to know their characters or build up a picture of their lives or get involved with them this seemed a bit of a waste.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-25 00:00:00 Dave Maida Jr. Accounts of hop-pickers who travelled from London to Kent in their thousands between about 1920 to the late 1960s. Interesting, though a bit repetitive and sometimes hard to read due to literal transcriptions of colloquial English. A good insight into the lives of ordinary women in the recent past, however, and particularly interesting introduction and conclusion, discussing the nature of oral history.