Sedbergh Festival of Books & Drama 2009

Susan Hayward and Barbara Crossley: “The Hefted Farmer”

This book is one of the few good things that came in the aftermath of the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak, and shows how the fragile pattern of life in one of those special parts of Yorkshire, Swaledale, could so easily have been lost for ever. It demonstrates how the landscape, seasons, wildlife and the lives of the people and their sheep are intimately connected and how the way of life remains vulnerable even without national disasters. Not only sheep are ‘Hefted’ to the Cumbrian Fells – its people are too!

Chris Wadsworth: “Hercules and the Farmer’s Wife”

When Chris Wadsworth became the owner of an art gallery, the well-meaning locals were at pains to point out: “You’ve got to have views, that’s what people here want!” However, Chris had other ideas, she set out to find artists – famous, infamous, lost and unknown – whose work would eventually make her gallery an international success. But artists are a funny bunch, like Karen, the farmer’s wife, whose Turneresque canvasses were painted on whatever came to hand – hessian, skirting boards – but ‘mainly in Dulux’, or the reclusive, transvestite Percy Kelly. In “Hercules and the Farmer’s Wife” Chris tells their stories, and recounts the many other unlikely incidents – from the exploding treacle pudding and the mystery of the Purple House, to knitting vicars flogging carpets to Mick Jagger. By turns funny and bittersweet, Chris Wadsworth offers a private view of the wonderful world she discovered when she made art her business.