Reviews for A Cotswold Village - Or Country Life And Pursuits In Gloucestershire

The average rating for A Cotswold Village - Or Country Life And Pursuits In Gloucestershire based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-23 00:00:00 Margaret Mckay First published in 1898 and I notice that my copy was the third edition, printed in 1912. It was in remarkably good condition for a hundred though smelled like an old relative. I hope the later editions came with translation footnotes for the numerous Latin phrases Gibbs liked to impress his readers with. 100 years ago they, like him, probably had the benefit of the best sort of classic education pater could buy, not like us 21st century oiks! amo, amas, amat... that's my limit. That aside, it was a very enjoyable link with the past, to a village just up the road from where I am now. Though the village hasn't changed too much, the folk have. Gibbs' neighbours are quaint, parochial, and have a language of their own. Gibbs himself has two passions outside his love of the Cotswolds around Bibury, namely cricket and bloodsports. I didn't mind the pro-bloodsports, after all it's the past, and they do things differently there, but he did go on at times, it was as if he had half a mind to write a manual the best way of hunting with hounds! There's a fantastic little comic sub-story about a local who goes to see his sister in London, and a slightly odder one about Shakespeare (yes, The Bard!) turning up on a horse, with an eye on a fox and the other on someone's daughter. Not a bad read, but probably for locals and historians.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-13 00:00:00 Richard Upchurch Moving to the Cotswolds has completely dominated my reading in the final months of this year - and this enduring country classic which first appeared in the late 1800s captivated me. My edition was a WW2 economy production but Gibbs' book was re-printed time after time and many copies are available through second-hand shops. Eton and Oxford educated, Gibbs inherited his literary genes from a grandfather who was a successful writer and Liberal MP from Somerset. But it was to Gloucestershire that Arthur moved after Oxford and this book paints hundreds of word paintings of life around Northleach, Bibury and other Cotswold Hamlets. The characters and life-styles he portrays have now vanished, but the topography and many of the buildings are relatively unchanged. Gibbs lived what seems from our perspective an enchanted and untroubled life. Yet it was a brief one. He died suddenly of heart disease at 31.