Who’s heard of Henry Beston (1888-1968)?
Image credit: http://www.henrybeston.org/ I knew nothing of this American writer and naturalist, but news from Budleigh Salterton’s sister-town of Brewster on Cape Cod on the far side of ‘The Pond’ always catches my eye. So I thought I’d like to know more about an illustrated presentation on Beston’s life and work being staged in Brewster. It was given by writer and film maker Don Wilding on 7 November at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster. Of course I should have mentioned it before the event! Preoccupied as we are with Remembrance and the Great War, but, Francophile that I am, I was also interested to learn that after leaving Harvard, Beston took up teaching at the University of Lyon in France. In 1914 he returned to Harvard as an English department assistant, but then came back to Europe, joining the French army in 1915 and serving as an ambulance driver. His service at Bois-le-Prêtre and at the Battle of Verdun was descri...