The Author Peter Maughan 

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"The chop of leather on oiled yellow and  the breaking voice of a cuckoo calling ..."


"...the iron ghosts of  winters past sent clanking and blowing round the small, log-warmed bar."


"The ringing light of a full moon striking the blue frost-bright slate of the village, echoing down the headlong High Street, fading away into silences where the shadows had drifted, piled like soot ..."



"Bill Sikes, with a black eye of dirt from a rabbit  warren and ditch mud on his legs like disreputable socks clean on that morning, careless under the sudden beneficence of the day, heedless of how or why. A Just William of a dog with the sun and the high road calling, trotting ahead with that sideways rolling gait of his to meet them..."


 

 


Under 

the 

Apple Boughs


'... I think Under the Apple Boughs should be required reading in every high school to introduce them to the finest in lyrical writing ... He sees with an inner eye what we cannot, and points it out with such delight, making you a witness to the glorious in the commonplace ... You know you have found genius when you find yourself reading it over and over.'  


'For me, the touchstone comparison is Dylan Thomas’s elegiac  A Child’s Christmas in Wales ... '


'Maughan truly typifies the Welsh meaning of the word Druid: seer. He sees, describes and enables us to see the magic too ...'


'Beautiful and often touching glimpses of life from the pen and the genius that is Peter  Maughan.' 

From Amazon reviews.


'A pastoral symphony ... Lyrical, descriptive, haunting at times, always beautiful.  It's a religious experience reading Under the Apple Boughs, leaving one awed and blessed.'

Henrietta Bellows LaLa, (St Martinville, LA), USA, Amazon review.                      


'A song of seasons, a Medieval illuminated Book of Hours ... For me, the touchstone comparison is Dylan Thomas’s elegiac A Child’s Christmas in Wales, although Thomas’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog has a similar focus … But there are other names cited. Maughan specifically dedicates this book “to the memory of Laurie Lee”, Kenneth Grahame (who famously wrote The Wind in the Willows, but wrote other books of stories and essays that sing of the same loved countryside), T.H. White, Henry Williamson, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, George Borrow, W.H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Maughan writes among hallowed company …'

Dr John Gough (Australia), Amazon review.


'... Peter Maughan paints literary landscapes with a Turner palette, all shimmery light, plays of shadows, chiaroscuro and startling detail.'

Angelica Bentley, (France), A Maze of Reviews blog. Top 500 Amazon reviewer. 


'... Beautiful and often touching glimpses of life from the pen and the genius that is Peter  Maughan.' 

Ray Nicholson, CA, Top 1000 Amazon reviewer. 


'... To experience the forces and beauty of nature such as Peter Maughan describes as he leads us along his journey through the seasons is like watching a maestro wave his baton and waiting for the magical notes to permeate the senses on the first down stroke ... And as I have said before of his lyrical prose, read it to those who cannot as yet read, and I will add now to read it to the elderly, for its music will give solace and comfort.'

JoyMarie, Lover of the Written Word, USA, Amazon review.


Available In A Kindle Edition On AmazonUK & AmazonUS 


Amazon Reviewers:

' ... Peter Maughan, a man for all seasons, a man whose works will endear him to the ages. All his writings are classics and have earned a place in world-wide libraries. They will never be old or outdated ... just enjoyed and very loved ... every word ... every nuance. Peter Maughan is a gift you give yourself and a gift for those you love.' 

Joymarie, Lover of the Written Word, USA. 


'... one of the most outstanding pieces of literature I've ever read ... A wonderful collection of non-fiction short stories ... You'll cry along with the author over the loss of his wonderful dog, Sikes, and fall in love with everyone and everything else in it. I absolutely love this collection, and reread it frequently. It restores my faith in the art of fine writing. Each story a stand-alone masterpiece.' 
Henrietta Bellows Lala, (St Martinville, LA). 

'A splendid collection of thirteen vignettes of rural life as seen through the eyes of a writer with the soul of a poet. Peter Maughan paints literary landscapes with a Turner palette, all shimmery light, plays of shadows, chiaroscuro and startling detail. The sense of place and the natural flow of the seasons are so strong as to become major actors in his stories while his characters, whether human or animal, stand out in full three-dimensional prominence, illuminated by his compassionate humanity …' 
Angelica Bentley (Dophin, France) A Maze of Reviews. Top 500 Amazon Reviewer. 

Under the Apple Boughs is a classic ... English prose at its finest.' 
Nash Black, (USA), Vine Voice.

' ... his descriptions of people, the weather, the aromas of each season is beyond words. I felt like I was actually inside the book itself as I am a country girl myself and know exactly what each season brings.'
Pyewacket "czarnowice," (UK), Vine Voice, Top 500 Reviewer  

'... reminiscent of an old painting or ageing photograph that somehow has magically come to life for a few precious moments ... before returning to still life or crumbling to dust. Beautiful and often touching glimpses of life from the pen and the genius that is Peter Maughan.'

Ray Nicholson, CA, Top 1000 Reviewer. 


'... Maughan truly typifies the Welsh meaning of the word Druid: seer. He sees, describes and enables us to see the magic too.' 
Clarissa Simmens, (Poet of FL), United States.

'His writing style is so beautiful, one must savor each sentence ... it touches upon all your senses and breathes a pleasant warmth into one's heart.' 
Nancy of Utah, US.

'I read this book and suddenly realised that every story in it came alive and spoke of the West Country as I had lived there. I was back and smelt the lanes and fields, I heard the soft voices telling their tales and saw the villages, towns and people alive and vital as though through a suddenly opened door. The language and cadence of Peter Maughan's writing is gloriously evocative, and whether one is young or old these little gems of language can be read and re-read with the knowledge that, in his hands, the writing of true literature is not yet on its death bed.' 
FelicityM, United Kingdom.

'I began reading Apple Boughs after a particularly grueling week which was rife with heartbreak ...  Beginning the narrative was like discovering the door to the Secret Garden and walking through to find the garden reclaimed and vibrant with trees and flowers and birdsong.  For three nights running, just before sleep, I would disappear behind that gate and wander slowly with Peter Maughan through the gardens of his imagination. Our time together ended far too soon, but by the end of it I felt my soul had healed a little.'
S. Kay Murphy, On Being Simply True blog.

'... Everyday events are touchingly chronicled in this book of short stories. Life, death, and all that lies in-between. It is a treasure, the kind you read in a comfortable chair with a cup of hot tea, and after each little story is read, you close the book and your eyes, and think about it all, before beginning the next.' 
Shannon Lastowski, (The Great Midwest), Vine Voice. 

                                            Under the Apple Boughs

A journey through the seasons of a West Country year. From a valley in the iron grip of a January morning, to the first healing colours of spring cutting into the land, through summer and autumn to the voice of Nathaniel, and a Christmas Eve in his memory when it was believed that at midnight the cattle knelt in their stalls. A voice speaking of a village England that was young still when he was.








 A Christmas Story



(Under the Apple Boughs)



He had made the round-topped table under the front window from beechwood. At its centre, rooks flew over a stand of winter elms, and in a broad belt around the edge of it a carousel of small animals ran and tumbled in demented, secret delight.
     Nathaniel touched each animal in turn, and as if for the first time, named them: Rabbit, Stoat, Hare, Shrew, Mole, Squirrel, Rat, Otter, Fox and Badger.
     On top of the television and a sideboard, and hung on the walls, were displayed some of his other wood carvings. Among them a Romany vardo, with a couple of tethered ponies cropping the verge; a retriever with a plump pheasant in its mouth; a team of two Shire horses, the drag and weight of the plough cut into their shoulders; and a vixen, head up to the wind, her mask tight with concentration and need.
     And on a round wall plaque, a small bird encircled by thorns. The bird, Nathaniel told me, was a robin, the thorns those of the hawthorn, from which was made the Crown of Christ.
     The breast of the robin, Nathaniel said with an edge of impatience, as if he'd had to explain this many times before, was, in the beginning, white. But it went to our Lord bleeding on the cross, holding water for Him in its beak. And came away from Him with His blood on its face and on its breast. Which is why the robin is said to be so confiding in man, and why its winter song sounds of lament.
     We sat down by the fire and refilled our glasses.
     We were drinking cider laced with gin because it was Christmas Eve. In the small tiled fireplace ash logs burned steadily, helped along by Nathaniel who gave them a poke now and then with his stick, sweetening the air with their scent.
     There was a refugee air about the old man, sitting with his wood carvings in that neat and otherwise featureless room. A man who had left the rest of his past behind, who had been fed and numbered and was waiting now only for some sort of collection.  
     We were sitting in the front room of his old people's bungalow, one of a cul-de-sac of them tucked away in a corner of the council estate on the edge of the village, their oblong windows giving them a vacant look, the small clipped lawns in front like bibs for mouths. 
     Nathaniel was over ninety, a big man, his physical decline sitting on him like an ill-fitting suit. Over half a century in the fields had weathered his body, his muscles hard with knots which pained and held him stiff.
     In a worn leather-framed photograph on the mantelpiece, a young Nathaniel posed with his new wife outside a terraced cottage, their first home together, one arm hugging her to him, and looking straight into the camera with a smile as confident as a wink. His wife, Flora, had the look of a woman pulled laughing in protest from the kitchen, taking off her apron perhaps and tidying herself as she went, and half resisting now, as if in the sudden company of strangers, the teasing arm around her, composing herself for the serious business of having your photograph taken.
     ''We were married near sixty years, me and Flora. Sixty years along o' me. She's dead now. Yes …'' 
     He reached for his tobacco tin and papers on the mantelpiece, the edges of the tin showing through silver, a scratched and faded picture of a bearded Tar of the King's Navy on the lid.
     ''She were a good mate to I, my Flora. My mommet. We had some good times together. And some bad, mind. Ohh, yes. And some bad.''
     Nathaniel teased a thin line of tobacco along the cigarette paper, his movements slow and a little shaky, his large, blue-veined hand knotted and stained with age, the little finger bent with an old break. The result, he'd told me earlier, of a fight with Big Willie Boswell, a travelling man up for the apples. They'd followed the Romany rule, stripped to the waist on a fighting mark made that day nearly sixty years ago by the heel of a boot in the grass behind one of the cider orchards. A mark to which the loser, Big Willie Boswell, afterwards failed to come up to.
     ''A girt big bastard, 'ee were. Used to wear a woman's scarf round his neck, and a gold pin, a horseshoe, near as big as a pony's. Rings on his fingers. His brother, Nelson, told him to take 'em off first. I can see 'ee now, Willie. Built like a Shire, prison tattoos up his arms, standing there. I got a hold of him straight away, went to him like a lover and rammed my head up into his nose. I had my work cut out, I can tell you that day. We got drunk afterwards together, me and Willie. Big Willie Boswell. I can see 'ee now…''
     Nathaniel sealed the cigarette paper with his tongue, and looked at me, the lacquer of age on his dark eyes like the crust of old fires. ''And times could be bad, could be hard. Oh, yes. Hunger, cold, worry. You got to know 'em all.''
     He struck a match to his cigarette, his hands cupped around it as if in a gale. ''And I were what they used to call a useful man. I could plough, pack a good straight furrow, sow, reap, mow.'' Nathaniel's low, warm breath of a voice blew on the words, rekindling them down the years, coaxingly, with an old confidence.
     ''I could lay a hedge. Work all day with a scythe. I could lamb, shear, ditch, thatch. Work as a horseman, cowman. Do most carpentry. Do most anything. Yes. That's all gone now, of course. Well, no need for it, see. Noa, no need for it.''
    He thought about that for a moment, leaning back with his glass and cigarette, and then said: ''You can't blame they today, though. No. Took near a week then to turn a five-acre field, huddled behind a team of them big old boys, working through whatever the good Lord happened to send down. Now 'tis a morning's work with a tractor, and you can shut yourself up in the cab with a wireless while you'm doing it. Noa, you can't blame they these days.''
     Nathaniel took a drink and studied me. ''And I'll tell 'ee something else. You could be out there in winter with nothing in you all the day but maybe a slice or two of fat bacon or a bit of bread and cheese. And your wife at home going without to keep the kids quiet.''
     With an old man's sudden anger he went on, ''You had to get out a bit at nights, see! Get out a bit and take some off 'em. Oh, yes!'' 
Nathaniel turned his face to the fire. ''I had a good old dog then, a lurcher,'' he said after a while. ''And an A 410. A poacher's piece. No louder than a sheep’s fart.''
     He looked up, his eyes gleeful with memory. ''And you could break it in two, see …'' he put down the glass to show me, miming the actions, his hands young again  ''… tie the butt under one arm, the barrel under the other, and your coat buttoned-up over it. With a new moon on its back, and that old boy of mine slipping ahead …''
     Nathaniel growled with delight. ''My Flora, she'd be up all hours burning the feathers, nagging I out to the back garden to bury the carcasses. The kids hanging out the bedroom window, whispering and giggling, and Flora, holding up the lamp, standing at the kitchen door in her night things.''
He grinned across at me, a brown, cracked grin of teeth, his eyes moist with drink. ''I were a wicked bugger, sometimes, I must tell 'ee that. I were no angel. Noa, no angel.''
     We freshened our glasses and drank to that.
     It was growing darker in the room now, and Nathaniel, with the aid of his stick, limped over to the light switch, and then drew the curtains.
     Returning to his seat, he paused in front of the plaque on the wall, the robin ringed with thorns, and swaying slightly, mock-punched the air in front of it, across the face of it. A gesture which had something in it of the rough, teasing, almost puzzled affection that big men will sometimes show to women and small children. A gesture that speaks not only of strength and weakness, and of experience and innocence. But also, somehow, of wistfulness.
     We saw off the last of the cider and Nathaniel got down to the singing. 'The Blackbird', the 'Pleasant and Delightful', and 'The Painful Plough', deftly threading the words through the intricate rhythms, his smoky old voice needing no accompaniment.
     ''We used to sing a lot in the old days. Sing at work. Sing in the pub. Sing going to work and coming home. Sing to the horses. Sing in the fields. Sing in the sheds. Sing everywhere.''
     One of his sons was due to take Nathaniel back with him to spend Christmas with the family, and we mustn't be drunk, noa. But just one, a small one for the road. And because it's Christmas. 
Nathaniel lowered his gin and water, and studied me for a few moments, head back, chin pushed out. 
     And then, as if a challenge, said: ''When I were a lad, father and mother used to tell us that on Christmas Eve, at midnight, the cattle would kneel in their stalls.''
     He aimed a sudden forefinger at me. ''Now that were old Christmas Eve, mind. January the fifth. And on Christmas Day, January the sixth, the whitethorn, the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury, flowered. The thorn planted by the man who buried Christ. Joseph of Arimathea. Come here to bring the good news. Yes!''
     He studied me again, and then smiled, slowly. ''Let you and me have another drink. Another small one. For the road.''
      I told him he was a wicked bugger. And he laughed, a sudden shout of a laugh, and slapped his hands together hard, like a horse dealer. ''Yes!'' he grinned. ''Yes.''   
     He saw me to the door after that, standing stiffly and limping his way across. And waited in the doorway until I had reached the gate, the light from it seeing me down the path like a lantern.
     There was frost on the air and the smell of fires, the sky quilted with stars. Merry Christmas and spray-on snow and the lights of trees, and televisions flickering behind drawn curtains as I walked down through the estate.
     I took the road which ran along the valley side, and back up into the village, the stiffening fields falling away one side into the night, the glimmerings of lights from scattered farmhouse windows almost drowned in the dark flood of the valley.
     And then, walking up into the lampless High Street, the bells of St Mary's broke above me, their simple rough strength shaken from its ancient stone, the full peal ringing out clear across the valley. Ringing out, rising  and  triumphant, the sound of them in the darkness like the sudden bright comfort of lights.













Under the Apple Boughs
Available in a kindle edition on AmazonUK & AmazoUS