This valuable book augments the oral history literature on rural England, in this case covering the life of Jack Hollands, around the area in west Kent where Shoreham, West Kingsdown, Eynsford and Farningham connect, above the Vale of Kensing and east of the Darent Valley. ‘East Hill’ is used locally to name an area of downland here. The area is proximate to London, yet surprisingly remote, criss-crossed by small lanes, and containing a number of coppice woods. The period covered is from the later nineteenth century to the 1990s, and Jack Hollands died in 2005.

The book explores a strong sense of continuity in this area, and much of it is instructive in describing ways of woodland life that clearly had a much longer existence, stretching back far before the memories preserved here. The woods are now rather derelict and not properly managed, and they will presumably shortly be wiped out as Green Belt policies are abandoned. Yet these woods were earlier the basis for important local industries, such as the making of faggots, wattle hurdles, chestnut hop poles, birch besoms, pea boughs, thatching splints, truncheons, waggons, as well as charcoal burning, etc, which are very well recalled here. The book is especially worthwhile in this regard. It also contains much of interest on smuggling, pubs and drinking cultures, standards of living and nourishment, the over-wintering of sheep, Methodist preaching as a form of entertainment, local benefactors, the defensive trenches dug around London during the First World War, weekend plotlands for Londoners in the 1920s, the decline of agricultural employment, and related topics.

As oral history, this book is well researched and transcribed, edited from recorded speech for the sake of flowing readability, and shows many of the strengths of the method and genre. Jack Hollands emerges as a man of great local knowledge, tied to his area, an open-minded person without strong opinions, with a sense of history that enriches everything he says, with an appreciation of local character found in both people and landscape, and with a sense of humour that enlivens his account.