Wounded soldier Paul Craddock returns to England from the Boer War, there to discover his father has made a fortune in the scrap trade for his son to spend as he chooses. Paul chooses to become a farmer, buying an estate with half a dozen tenant farms. He learns his trade on the job, the most significant part of which includes learning that he must care as much for the people working the land as for the land itself. Through Paul’s eighty or so years we get an up close and personal view of rural England through two world wars and a world-wide depression, two wives, many children and grandchildren, and a constant love of and concern for the land and making it support all who live on it.

As always with Delderfield there is much rapturous description of the English country landscape, although he never lets the reader forget it can be as terrible as it is beautiful. There are some marvelous characters, good and bad, and comedy and tragedy in equal measure (Ikey, oh Ikey.). As with any male writer of that time and place there is casual misogyny and bigotry, but Paul’s is a life well lived and it is a pleasure to make that journey with him. A comfort read for me since I was a teen.

Book Review Monday Chatter A Horseman Riding By R.F. Delderfield