Machinations
Thursday, 4 May 2023
Reading “South Riding” (by Winifred Holtby, 1936), a novel of its time (as many of them are). The clever (?) twist of the name is there is no South Riding in the real UK, although Britain has an East, West, and North version; also the word riding derives from the Viking term for thirds, so…still clever: no fourth version. Still, “South Riding” works as a novelized anthropological study of the people, places, and political machinations of eastern Yorkshire, north of Hull, after WWI and before WWII.
So distinctive, the heart-shaped leaves of Cercis canadensis, the eastern redbud.