Bøker av A. G. Street

A pen portrait of a farming life in southern England and in western Canada.

First published by Faber & Faber in 1940, A Crook in the Furrow was described by the Manchester Evening News as 'like no other detective story. Mr Street's plots and stratagems, his devices are well up to the most exacting professional standards. As a background for it there is Mr Street's great love and knowledge of the English countryside'. Detective Inspector 'Coincidence' Charles Jenks has been investigating a hunch that Dr Larne of 223 Harley Street has been committing crimes. What these crimes are, however, he isn't sure, but Dr Larne's name has occurred too frequently in reference accounts of suspicious circumstances for 'Coincidence' Charles to think that he is perfectly innocent. As ever, 'Coincidence' Charles is right. Dr Larne has been supplying drugs using his Harley Street practice and two unknown accomplices, Peggy and Frank Young. Believing that 'Coincidence' Charles is onto their scheme, Larne persuades the couple to move to the country and set up as 'honest' farmers in order to continue their growing business away from the prying eyes of 'Coincidence' Charles. Can Charles discover what is really going on, or will the country straighten them out? After all, 'Wiltshire won't have crooks in her furrows'.

Farmer's Glory was first published in 1932. It was A. G. Street's first book and remains his most famous. In his own modest words 'This book is simply an attempt to give a pen picture of farming life in Southern England and Western Canada.' It succeeds memorably.Compton Mackenzie, reviewing it in the Daily Mail, wrote, 'Let me recommend it to the general public as a model of unpretentious English, an enthralling picture of rural life on both sides of the Atlantic, a manual of deadly common sense, and a thing of beauty. It will go on the shelf of my library with Cobbett's Rural Rides and White's Natural History of Selborne'. The comment about 'unpretentious English' is interesting. So exemplary was it considered to be in that respect, Cambridge University selected it as one of its set books for what was then School Certificate. His daughter, Pamela Street, marvelled at that, remembering he left school at the age of fifteen.'A classic within that special genre of country-writing ... a wealth of fine detail and anecdote ... the author's voice and personality come through with an undimmed vividness - shrewd, dogged, humorous and charged with the warmth of humanity.' Desmond Hawkins, Country Life

The seemingly endless furrows ploughed by the author himself on his farm in Wiltshire provide the inspiration for this book, first published in 1934. The Endless Furrow chronicles the traditional life of the rural community while offering the fictional depiction of a 'townsman's' ambition to farm his own land.

' "Strawberry Roan", the title-part of the story, is a splendid heifer, round whose career, from her calfhood, through her various changes of ownership to her achievement of renown as a champion milker and her final return to the little farmer who bred her, are woven the fortunes of a crowd of Wiltshire folk and the troubles of the land.

The Gentleman of the Party was first published in 1936 and was described by Douglas West in the Daily Mail as a 'robust and impressive novel'.

'No one who cares at all about England can afford to miss reading Already Walks Tomorrow.' Sunday Times'It must have been a most satisfying book to write.