Found amongst a pile of books at Jot HQ, the pocket-sized ‘Patience Strong ‘Quiet Corner ‘calendar for 1955 with its sepia photographs of ‘ picturesque ‘ spots in England. We had almost forgotten that publishers still used sepia photographs as late as this, but then remembered the lifeless and dispiriting photographs of landscapes and empty streets in Arthur Mee’s ‘King’s England’ series of county guide books. No wonder the county guides published by Shell from 1934 were regarded as such a welcome change from these dreary volumes. Mee’s totally predictable descriptions of towns and villages in each county were matched by Strong’s trite and cliché-ridden verse formatted as prose in her calendar and exemplified in ‘ The Sunlit Way ‘which accompanied a traffic-free photo of a ‘ quiet corner of old Warwick ‘ on the page for January 1955.
The Sunlit Way
‘May the way that lies ahead be lit with sunny gleams—and prove to be the road to the fulfilment of your dream…And may it lead you to the place where lost hopes are restored—where love is true and life is good and faith has its reward.’
Tumpty-tum …tumpety tum
England’s Treasures (October)
‘All along the roads of England treasures can be seen. Little old world villages with church and pond and green . Gems of beauty—cherish them and guard them jealously—and let no vandal touch the sacred scenes of history.’
Not sure about the scansion there, Patience.
The Glorious Month (May)
May is the month of bloom and blossom.
May is the month of song and light.
Of tulips by the garden path
And hawthorn hedges, snowy white.
May brings the bluebells to the wood
And paints the cowslips by the stream.
May makes this sad old bad old world
As lovely as a poet’s dream.
Which poet would that be?
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