My book ‘Forgotten Fen’ has received glowing reviews from ‘The Field’, ‘Fallon’s Angler’, ‘The Angling Trust’, ‘The Angling Times’ and other respected publications.
It’s available to buy in a stunning hardback edition, direct from independent bookshops, Amazon and The Medlar Press (links below). It was a particular honour to be published by Medlar, who are one of Britain’s greatest rural publishing houses. Their writers include Arthur Ransome, (author of ‘Swallows and Amazons’) and ‘BB’, who wrote ‘The Little Grey Men’- which won the Carnegie Medal.
Medlar: https://www.medlarpress.com/bookstore/?store-page=Forgotten-Fen-p648830566
The Field published a review of ‘Forgotten Fen’ in their ‘Best of British’ edition, last summer. Ettie Neil-Gallacher wrote: ‘Gareth Craddock is an authoritative guide, having discovered the area when he visited his grandfather’s former colliery on the old fen system… this is an affecting and poetic work. What emerges from these pages, beautifully illustrated by fellow fisherman and fen enthusiast John Richardson, are the meditative reflections of a true countryman with an innate love and respect for the waters of this abandoned marshland, fed by a forgotten stream, encountering marsh harriers, pike, tench, marsh frogs, owls, beavers and even ‘the restless spirit of a long-dead fen walker’…
Nick Fallowfield-Cooper of Fallon’s Angler had this to say: ‘ “Forgotten Fen” begins in late autumn with Gareth Craddock wandering the Kent marshes with his pike rod in hand, and it’s through his transient nature of stepping out onto the marsh that this book takes shape . . . Often, my complaint of contemporary “nature writers” is that they find a place that they then take ownership of and give meaning to, a sense that nature is healing, that nature is a service for our mental wellbeing. Craddock is not this, he is a countryman born and bred. He knows this land through his own daily meanderings, a lifetime of learning from the local folk and talking to the wind . . . “Forgotten Fen” is a book that you feel has burst out from the keyboard; an effortless piece of writing, a joyous account from beginning to end.’
John Cheyne from The Angling Trust wrote: ‘The author’s explorations take him to a wild hinterland, mostly untrod by anglers or any other humans for that matter. He hacks through brambles, builds fishing nests amongst the huge stands of nettles and at times finds himself held hostage by mists, fogs and a jungle of deadly nightshade. He vividly describes the detail of the crystal-clear waters, the fish that live in them and the birds that fly above them, but more importantly he captures the atmosphere, the ghosts, the spirit of the place and its rare human characters. There is darkness and light here. Often, as a reader, you wish you were in these wild places yourself, chasing the huge perch, enormous wild tench, leviathan eels, but at other times you are quite pleased to be sat at home reading about the dark freezing mists, the ghost infested drains and the aggressive bulls with a taste for blood.’
I’m still blogging, and also writing for magazines, too; I was recently published by ‘Piscator’ and ‘Fallon’s Angler’.
I’m working on another book, based on education, epilepsy, trauma, haunted classrooms- and the land they occupy. I hope to have this mostly finished by Christmas.
I’ll leave you with some photos of the territory- and some of the artwork by the great John Richardson, who first encouraged me to write ‘Forgotten Fen’.
Postcards from the English Outback 