Hope Bourne's History of Exmoor

Book excerpt: Hope Bourne, doyenne of Exmoor writers, was fascinated by the history of herhome, its landscape and its people. She published much on the subject, but themost substantial work was A Little History of Exmoor, published in 1968 andnever reprinted.Although not a professional historian, in that book Hope traced - in her customarilyevocative and eminently readable prose - the key developments in Exmoor'slong heritage: the Celtic and Saxon colonisation; the Norman development of theRoyal Forest; the disafforestation and acquisition by the Knight family of a vasttract of the Moor in the nineteenth century; and the advent of the National Parkin the twentieth century. The text was accompanied by a selection of HopeBourne's fine drawings, which further brought to life the key themes of her story.In this entirely re-set version of the book, new generations can now experienceHope's unique interpretation of Exmoor's history, which was tempered andinformed by her direct experience of living the sort of existence that would havebeen familiar to Exmoor dwellers many centuries before.