Books by Elizabeth Clarke

The harshly magnificent landscape of the Elan Valley in Mid Wales was changed utterly in the late 1890s by a reservoir building project initiated by the Corporation of Birmingham in order to supply water to that expanding city. A great feat of civil engineering, the project required the flooding of land by the River Elan and the compensating of local landowners; but also made a tremendous impact on the traditions, rights and privileges of the local commoners, and on a flock system of hill farming that had existed for hundreds of years. Originally published in 1969, The Valley is Elizabeth Clarke's account of hill farming life in the Elan Valley and the massive changes wrought upon it between the first period of reservoir construction and a subsequent project that followed the Second World War.

'Owls call now in the hazy afternoon, and curlews get up in the night and join their voices with the plovers' lost cries. Small birds, distracted by the fury of mating, fly hedge-high in flight and pursuit and brush past one's ear, indifferent to human presence.There is a common belief that when sight diminishes hearing is intensified - an observation made, I would say, by onlookers. I doubt whether I hear more acutely than before, but every trifle heard passes under expert scrutiny in some formerly idle workshop in my mind...' Elizabeth Clarke's The Darkening Green (first published in 1964) portrays the gradual loss of sight endured by a farmer's daughter, and bursts with lyrical observation of rural life. It was inspired by Clarke's personal experience of supporting her husband, a farmer near the Elan Valley in mid-Wales, as his own vision began to fade.