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The Book

OUT NOW!

 

 
The Bart and the Bounder was broadcast on BBC2 prime time on 28th February 2006 as a one off. It achieved a very respectful exit rating of 2.8 million viewers. despite almost no PR or trailing by the BBC. The BBC commissioning editor, said that he very much liked the programme and thought it was “great”

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After the programme went out, John Murray’s, the premier publishing division of Hodder Headline, contacted Mike and Richard to discuss a more “edgy” book on the concept. The aim is to show a totally new view of the countryside through those characters who love it best as it is, not what its newer inhabitants want it to be. The book has now been completed with 12 chapters which follow the changing seasons in some of the most evocative and fascinating parts of the countryside in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

  • Conflict between the new Cotswold “incomers”, who want to turn the place into Hollywood, and the Gypsy population who want freedom to pursue their traditional ways.
  • How Yorkshire miners have become England’s top experts on rat hunting and bird keeping, and their encounter with Bart and Bounder’s dining club of city gents.
  • What it is really like to be a countryman. B&B suss out what makes Charlie Bettinson, the hero of the TV programme tick, and why his mother is the “White Witch of Cornwall”
  • Generations of poachers in Norfolk and their continued battle with the local Earl.
  • England’s new wildlife – Boar and large feral cats as they are hunted in McCartney territory.
  • Hampshire – the real contrast between game and coarse fishing from the experts.
  • A Scottish duke’s battle to restore his river to its former glory.
  • Who loves Lyme Regis? How a new community is preserving the heritage of this magical seaside village.
  • Not so traditional country Christmas’s as they used to be.
  • The last of the Coracle fishermen in Wales, and the dying craft they are trying to preserve.
  • What life is like to live on the remote Scottish island of Jura and go poaching with B&B.
  • Has Irelands new wealth spoiled it's traditional charm? B&B explore the magic of Connemara to see what has changed.

 

The book is titled “Endangered Species” to reflect the danger of our countryside disappearing altogether and becoming yet another suburb of suburbia

 

 

 

 

 

Book Signings

Date
Time
Address
Who
4th December 2007
6:00pm

Farlows,
9 Pall Mall,
London

SW1
Bart and Bounder

 


Country Life Magazine

"Bart and Bounder have produced a Five Star book, which is a blazing beacon
in a distant landscape."

 

Ronnie Corbett on the Bounder.


" I find his spirit and humour and energies very, very invigorating and refreshing, and here it all is repeated in this wonderful book. He does throb with spirit and loves the country pursuits. It makes a most refreshing read and I just hope it is a great success.

 

Daily Express, Penny Meyrick

"This book is huge fun, written with vivacity and peopled by characters that politicians and political correctness would rather airbrush out of modern life. I'd recommend this as an ideal gift for the cantankerous, the inquisitive and the open minded - teetotallers and vegetarians excepted."

Chris Tarrant

“This lovely book chronicles the rustic ramblings of two extraordinary characters through a Britain that has all but disappeared, where there is still a real quality of life and man is altogether kinder to his fellow man”.

The Telegraph

"Like a pair of disreputable Victorian villains, the Bart and the Bounder have confessed their sins in a wonderful book, titled "Endangered Species". What makes the tales in their book such a treat is that the pair not only ransacked their long memories and old game books for anecdotes but actually went out on the road together for 3 months last year, travelling Britain, ferreting out old acquaintances - gamekeepers, gypsies, coal miners - and quizzing them about their secrets of the countryside. In their research, they did stumble on a single hidden truth that rural writers who have taught us to accept with mournful certainty the final passing of a rural race and its way of life may have spoken too soon. The Bart and Bounder's belief is rather that "the English countryside is so magical that it makes new countrymen every generation, and the new countrymen are in every way as much a part of the country as the old ones were 100 years ago. You don't have to be born there to be one of them, you only have to find a way of enjoying it when you live there." Country people are not really an endangered species at all and they will never die out until England's very last green acre goes under concrete. It is even possible then, that the next generation will throw up a a pair of exuberant aberrations like the Bart and the Bounder. Lord, help us."

 

Another Book!

John Murrays have just commissioned a new book from the Bart, co-authored by Philip Carr-Gomm, an expert in Magic. The Bart became fascinated by all the countryman's stories of unexplainable happenings and decided to investigate. It turns out that many of those who have spent time in England, from Julius Caesar to Winston Churchill, have taken the subject very seriously indeed we've heard that the latter even had a special "occult operations centre" under his War Room in Whitehall to work magic against Hitler! - and it is no wonder interest is springing up again. "The Book of English Magic", will take a serious, historical perspective of the subject, meet some extraordinary people, and even show readers how to experiment a little themselves a la "Dangerous Book for Boys".

 

  
 
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