Endsleigh: The Memoirs of a River Keeper - Hardcover

Adams, Horace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0863036856 ISBN 13: 9780863036859

Publisher: Brick Lane Books, 1994

Synopsis

Rear cover reads: Horace Adams and Endsleigh are bywords among game fishermen. Endsleigh is the Devon fishing lodge of past Dukes of Bedford on the River Tamar. It was referred to, briefly, in the present Duke's autobio­graphy: A Silver-Plated Spoon. Since 1962, it has been managed by a syndicate which now includes the Marquess of Tavistock, his son. Horace knows Endsleigh's fourteen mile stretch of river better than any man alive. From 1933 until his retirement in 1985 at the age of seventy­two, he worked there first as hatchery boy, then as water bailiff and ghillie for the 12th Duke, then as water bailiff and general ghillie with special responsibility for seven miles of the upper reaches. Horace is funny, shrewd, quirky, opinionated and an inveterate raconteur. We follow his life from village boyhood, through Endsleigh's gracious, ducal days to more recent times when he must guard against poaching, pollution and overfishing. Of little formal education, he can well hold his own with those he would formerly have called his `betters'. Laced with anecdotes and country lore and the technicalities of game fishing (salmon fishing in particular), these memoirs are a vivid histori­cal account of changing social mores and conditions. By nature a loner and `mistrustful' of others, Horace does not hesitate to cite the trends he believes are fragmenting a once harmonious countryside. ENDSLEIGH is the tenth published autobiography in Clive Murphy's celebrated series of recorded lives. This, therefore, is a 'spoken book'. And when Horace speaks, he does so with startling, often satirical, effect.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brick Lane Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0863036856
• ISBN 13: 9780863036859
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Murphy Clive