The Deaf Doctor

Description

Covering the period between the two world wars, the Second World War itself and the fifteen years that followed, The Deaf Doctor focuses primarily on Marian’s formative years, which coincided with farming in the 1950s: the last decade of traditional mixed farming before the use of chemicals and more efficient mechanisation. Wage increases, monoculture and increased efficiency meant that fewer people worked on the land by the 1960s, fundamentally changing the texture of everyday life.

Country sports were the chief pastime of rural communities then when most still adhered to the seasons and there was a slower pace of life with few distractions.

The Deaf Doctor also provides an account of Marian’s father, his pre-war way of life and his experiences in the Far East as an army doctor during the Second World War, serving as a prelude. Depicting the social history of an age in which tradition still held considerable sway while powerful undercurrents were working in the opposite direction.

The ’50s were in many ways an extension of the ’30s way of life, until they weren’t.

Marian Eason grew up on her family’s Gloucestershire farm from the age of one and now lives on another family farm in Warwickshire. Called to the Bar in 1971, as an equestrian journalist she has researched numerous works including The Master of the Horse, racing books by Ivor Herbert and George Rainbird’s  An Illustrated Guide to Wine.  Her commissioned The Best Little Hunt in England was published in 2019. She has ridden horses competitively and followed hounds all her life.