Herry and Danny at Stocks, Hampshire in 1953
'Scenes From A Hampshire Childhood' by Gerald Ponting is a small masterpiece, capturing beautifully the era of the 1940s and 50s spent in a peaceful village in the Hampshire countryside. Village life, grazing milking cattle on the village green (in that case Breamore marsh), his father's milk round, toys, dogs, household and kitchen equipment such as the 'copper', the arrival of television, flowers of the hedgerows, the village fete and the village school are all beautifully evoked from a background of the writer's simple and settled home life. The photographs are particularly astonishing, as Mr Ponting took up photography as a child and he has captured scenes rarely seen in such contemporaneity. Click the heading for more details about the book from the author's website
