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© Copyright 1999
TWYFORD ~ Ringing The Changes
Doreen Pearce & Stanley Crooks
Book cover
This book is about Twyford, a Hampshire village, and its people, but Doreen Pearce’s perceptive and sensitive cameos of the vibrant life of this small community are much more than the story of a single village. Tapping the rich seams of people’s memories, she traces the progress, typical of rural England, of a century in which life has changed more rapidly than at any other time in history. People who saw the first aeroplane fly over their village lived to see men walk on the moon. Families who fiddled with cat’s whisker wireless sets now keep in touch by e-mail with sons and daughters spending ‘gap years’ in Sri Lanka or The Gambia. Roads which for centuries had to bear only the hooves of horses and the wheels of farm carts now shudder beneath the weight of juggernauts.

In the rest of the book, Stanley Crooks contrasts Doreen’s story of rapid change in the 20th Century with the leisurely pace of evolution in the earlier years of the two millennia now coming to an end - of ancient houses, great and small, rich in history; of a church still thriving more than a thousand years after the first Christians arrived. Twyford emerges as a village with a fascinating history of its own, but always aware of its place in a wider world, from Roman settlement to support for American Independence; sending emigrants to Australia, missionaries to Africa or its sons to fight for freedom.

Each generation has had its characters, its strong personalities who have featured large in village life, and often on a larger stage. They are brought to life again in this intriguing book.

Publisher: George Mann Publications / 1999
ISBN: 0952442434
Style: Paperback / 224 pages / 45 illustrations
Price: UK: £8.50 per copy
Postage: UK: £1.50 per copy / Outside UK: £2.50 per copy
To order: Mail order from Doreen Pearce, Wayside, Roman Road, Twyford, Winchester SO21 1QW, England
Email: doreen.pearce@lineone.net
Please make your payment, in pounds sterling, to Twyford PCC
Delivery:Please allow 28 days for delivery in the UK and up to six weeks elsewhere