Between the Riccall and the Rye

From the 1930s to the 1960s Herbert Read was probably the world's leading writer on modern art. His name is closely associated with the key figures of international modernism, from Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, to Kurt Schwitters and Naum Gabo, to name but a few. He also worked with major figures in literature, including George Orwell and T.S. Eliot, and was an active member of the British anarchist movement. But Read was also an exile, driven by poverty as a child from his idyllic rural home in Ryedale to grow up in industrial Halifax and Leeds. For him this represented an expulsion from Eden, and it is difficult to understand Read as a modernist writer and critic without recognising this profound sense of loss. Only relatively late in life was Read able to return to Ryedale. In this collection of writings we hear Read telling in a straightforward but moving way his memories of a Yorkshire childhood. Through his poetry and prose we gain a real sense of his longing to return. And once he is back in the Ryedale landscape where he was born there is a profound feeling in his writings of him belonging to the land.