‘IVVER SEN’ IS BACK: PAPERBACK EDITION
By popular demand, the first book to be published by River Greta Writer, ‘Ivver Sen’, is now available in paperback. Keith Richardson's award-winning book about Lakeland shepherds, contains pastel drawings by the artist Keith Bowen and photography by Val Corbett.
For further information on this and other River Greta Writer publication contact Keith via email at keithr.richardson@outlook.com
- home
- books
- gallery
- reviews
BUY THE BOOK
Select which of the books below you would like to purchase.
THE GRETA
The story of a Lakeland river as it flows through the life and times of Keswick and its people.
The book embraces the river as a central theme, a timeless current running through the life and times of the Lake District town of Keswick. The author Keith Richardson describes the Greta as the greatest little river in the world. Only four miles long it is a stream of immense beauty, especially in the higher reaches where the beck runs below Brundholme Woods. It is a river of endless fascination.
JACK’S YAK
A unique journey through time with the special trees of the Lake District and Cumbria and the remarkable stories they have to tell.
JOSS
Keith Richardson, in this remarkably insightful book, and in his extensive
interviews with Naylor, has uncovered uncomfortable elements in a tough
upbringing. But life in the remoter valleys was raw in a way that today's
young people would find intolerable. It made them or it broke them. In Joss
Naylor's case it coloured the man he became; single minded, determined, with
no side to him and inherently a decent and dignified man who has brought
nothing but honour to his sport.
Ross Brewster - writer and former fell runner
Now out of print.
IVVER SEN
In this fine, evocative book Keith Richardson puts figures in
the Lake District landscape, figures that may reach for their pitchfork at
the very mention of culture; but characters, faces that carry
in their grain the Lake District's DNA.
Eric Robson - writer and broadcaster
IVVER SEN IS BACK - BUT WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT
Ivver Sen is Cumbrian dialect for ever since.
The title is a direct reference to the many years that hill farming has existed in the Lake District, since the early Norse settlers. Ivver Sen the book is about the people who have lived and worked the land over the years and those who cling on to their fell farming heritage to this day. The book tells their amazing story through Keith Richardson's words and Keith Bowen's pastel drawings.
The book tells the fascinating stories of real Lakeland people and their lives and times, including brother and sister Johnny and Betty Richardson who spent an idyllic childhood at Watendlath in the early 1930s. It also goes on to tell the dramatic story of Blencathra huntsman Johnny who was captured at Tobruk in 1941 and escaped from German Prisoner of War camps in Italy to be pursued relentlessly by the Nazis across the Apennine mountain range. After being recaptured twice he eventually made good his escape with the help of an Italian family who gave him shelter and whom he revisited 40 years after the war.
Other characters featured in the book include the legendary fell runner and farmer Joss Naylor, Jean and Derick Wilson, Dennis Monkhouse, Ronnie Cape, Barry Todhunter, Jonny Birkett, Skelt Robinson, Glenn Tubman, Victor Brownlee, Tommy Graves, Geordie Hutton and many others.
Every chapter tells a different story and provides a moving, informative, entertaining and, at times, humorous account of the farming way of life in Lakeland. It is rich in nostalgia but also voices opinions on hill farming today.
In addition to Keith Bowen's superb pastel drawings there are also evocative, previously unpublished, images from the past set against the brilliant modern day photography by Val Corbett of the timeless fells, lakes and rivers that provide the backcloth for the stories of a very special breed of people; a people who are fast disappearing from the land on which they have lived and worked down the centuries.