On the Red Hill by Mike Parker

On the Red Hill Reviews

• 
  Annie

  This is one of those ambitious nonfiction books where multiple strands of life and reality are woven together so seamlessly and beautifully that one marvels at the engineering and craft of the thing. Mike Parker has structured his book into fourths, and each of these fourths is made of a cardinal direction, a season, an element, and a flesh and blood character, one of whom is the author himself. Brilliant and a bit pagan, the author masterfully leads the reader through all these lenses, weaving memoir, culture, and history with the unflinching honesty of funny and very authentic voice. The Welsh language, hireath, sanctuary, and the historical struggle of gay rights in Britain are just a few of the things I learned more about reading this book.
• 
  Paul

  Shortly after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1972, Reg and George moved to deepest rural Wales from Bournemouth. They had a couple of homes before settling into a house that would become a B&B and be their home until 2011. In total, they were together over six decades, the first two of which their relationship was deemed to be illegal by the state. In 2006 they formally became a couple with a short civil partnership ceremony in the town of Machynlleth. They had two witnesses to this momentous occasion, Peredur and Mike Parker.
  
  Mike Parker was another exile from England having first gone to Wales to write a Rough Guide and realised that he actually quite liked the place. Discovering his sexuality, Parker had had a large number of flings and very short term relationships in his younger days but arriving in Wales calmed him and it was there that he first met Peredur. Finding excuses to go and see him in the shop he was working they both realised that they were attracted to each other and both fell in love.
  
  Reg, George, Preds and Mike were to become close friends, hence why the younger guys ended up as witnesses and came to love the house that the older guys owned. They started to save up with the intention of purchasing it after they had passed away; but in a remarkable turn of events, Reg and George left the property to them in the will. For the first time, they had some proper financial security and Preds was living in the home that he always dreamed of. They didn’t change much, to begin with, but added a swimming pond for bracing dips
  
  After moving in they begun to sort through their home and discovered a rich history of Reg and George’s younger lives through their diaries, letter and personal effects. This is not just the story of the older and younger guys and their lives. Rather it is a layered and multi-faceted memoir of Parker's time growing up, Preds life in a small Welsh town and the way that the community supports each other. The book is split into the four parts and he writes about the seasons, the four elements of earth, wire, fire and water and about each of them. Central to all of this though is Rhiw Goch, or the Red Hill, and how it changes every single day with the seasons, the way that kites hang in the air and the thrill of snow cutting them off sometimes, though the thrill of being isolated wears off after a brief period of time. I had read Parker's previous books on maps and this was recommended to me. I thought this was a really enjoyable book about a new life in Wales coupled with a touch of history, landscape, social history and the natural world of Wales that captivates him every time he steps outside the door. It is a book full of deep love for the man and the land he now inhabits.
• 
  Daniel Myatt

  Upon reflection and the comment of another user! I feel brave enough to alter my review!
  
  I did not enjoy this long, plodding book that dragged on! I found some of the characters quite dislikeable and predatory for what their own gains.
  
  A really unenjoyable read to be honest!
• 
  Helen

  This is a lovely book, really hard to categorise though! It's part gay memoir/history, part the story of a house, part reflection on community and part description of the rhythm of the natural world - a summary which probably doesn't do justice to any of the parts. There is a lot of artistic and poetic inspiration here too. There is a fourfold structure following different themes - the four seasons, the four elements, the four men whose stories are told here.
  The house, Rhiw Goch, is a traditional Welsh farmhouse in a quiet corner of the Dyfi valley. It has not been a working farm for many years, but it still has some of its original land and outhouses and is relatively unspoilt. This house was the home of two gay men in the late 20th century, and they successfully lived as a couple there for many years, eventually befriended by the author and his partner who now live in the house, having inherited it from the older couple. The life achieved there sounds idyllic, in tune with its very rural surroundings but a riot of sociability and hospitality too.
  I said that this book was hard to slot into any one category, and so it is, as a summary doesn't do justice to the "country" element or indeed to the archival, as the house came packed with the older pair's photographs, letters and diaries, so there's quite a bit of gay social history here too. Perhaps it is best summed up as the story of finding oneself in both home and landscape.
• 
  Andy Weston

  I read this as it was longlisted for the Wainwright Nature-Writing Prize (2020), and also because its mid-Wales hill setting is somewhere I know well.
  But I was bowled a doosra and didn't spot it.
  This is an overtly personal account of the author and his partner following in the footsteps of their mentors, George Walton and Reg Mickisch. In 1972, just five years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, George and Reg opted for the quiet life and settled in a Welsh-speaking village in the Montgomeryshire hills, converting an old village pub into a B&B. It is their story.
  Certainly it uses the four seasons, four elements, and four lives as its structure, but the nature writing is sparse, and a link to the Wainwright Prize tenuous at best.
  
  I've read two others from the Longlist so far, Kathleen Jamie, which has its moments, and the excellent The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange.
• 
  Claire O'Sullivan

  What a gorgeous read . Poignant. Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize - deservedly so.
• 
  Rebecca

  Although this was the Wainwright Prize runner-up in the UK nature writing category, it’s primarily a memoir/group biography about Parker, his partner Peredur, and George and Reg, the couple who previously inhabited their home of Rhiw Goch in the Welsh Hills and left it to the younger pair in their wills. In structuring the book into four parts, each associated with an element, a season, a direction of the compass and a main character, Parker focuses on the rhythms of the natural year. The subtitle emphasizes the role Rhiw Goch played, providing all four with a sense of belonging in a rural setting not traditionally welcoming to homosexuals.
  
  Were George and Reg the ‘only gays in the village,’ as the Little Britain sketch has it? Impossible to say, but when they had Powys’ first same-sex civil partnership ceremony in February 2006, they’d been together nearly 60 years. By the time Parker and his partner took over the former guesthouse, gay partnerships were more accepted. In delving back into his friends’ past, then, he conjures up another time: George fought in the Second World War, and for the first 18 years he was with Reg their relationship was technically illegal. But they never rubbed it in any faces, preferring to live quietly, traveling on the Continent and hosting guests at their series of Welsh B&Bs; their politics was conservative, and they were admired locally for their cooking and hospitality (Reg) and endurance cycling (George).
  
  There are lots of in-text black-and-white photographs of Reg and George over the years and of Rhiw Goch through the seasons. Using captioned photos, journal entries, letters and other documents, Parker gives a clear impression of his late friends’ characters. There is something pitiable about both: George resisting ageing with nude weightlifting well into his sixties; Reg still essentially ashamed of his sexuality as well as his dyslexia. I felt I got to know the younger protagonists less well, but that may simply be because their stories are ongoing. It’s remarkable how Welsh Parker now seems: though he grew up in the English Midlands, he now speaks decent Welsh and has even stood for election for the Plaid Cymru party.
  
  It’s rare to come across something in the life writing field that feels genuinely sui generis. There were moments when my attention waned (e.g., George’s feuds with the neighbors), but so strong is the overall sense of time, place and personality that this is a book to prize.
  
  Originally published on my blog,
  Bookish Beck.
• 
  Andrew Howdle

  This book is a prose Four Quartets. It is a memoir linked by a single incident, how George and Reg, a homosexual couple (George refused to use the euphemistic "gay") left their home, Red Hill, which can also be translated as "bloody sex" in Welsh, to Mike and Preds. Each part of the memoir maps a different character, a different element, and a different direction: Fire/South; Earth/North; Air/East; Water/West. The memoir charts many themes, Wales, landscape, belonging, seasonal change, youth, age, and the changing status of men who love men. The strength of the memoir rests with its honesty, its warts and all approach, its refusal to become just another story of sex and oppression. Parker writes evocatively throughout, though some of the nature writing can get a bit Jarmanish at times. Red Hill does not turn into Prospect Cottage, however, and a rich and beautifully written memoir is all the better for that.
• 
  Judith

  This is an unusual book to say the least. It revolves around two gay couples living in the Welsh countryside and discovering their environment while society slowly accepts the gay lifestyle as normal. The couples are from two different generations so the reader gets a complete history from the criminalization of homosexuality to the official sanctioning of gay weddings. This part of the book is fascinating but the writer gets too bogged down in the details of the flora and fauna of the region. I get that he's crazy about this part of the world and I'm sure the Welsh countryside is beautiful in every season, but I almost fell asleep several times while plodding through his descriptions of the flowers and the trees and the birds and the bees.
• 
  Ricky Schneider

  This is my favorite kind of nonfiction to get lost in. A very specific and yet relatively unknown story unravels across its pages as it immerses the reader in its niche brand of historical reverence and quiet revelry. A distinctly Welsh coziness welcomes you into this multigenerational queer chronicle of a countryside farmhouse and the fateful inheritance of its romantic rusticity.
  
  George and Reg are the first gay couple to be granted a civil partnership in the small hamlet of Machynlleth, Wales. Despite the rural conservatism of the area, they have made its rolling green hillsides their home. Rhiw Goch, translated Red Hill, is their private greenwood. A sanctuary where they have opened a successful Bed and Breakfast and shared their later lives with one another and their loyal patrons. As they near the winter of their lives, they look to a younger generation to take over their humble homestead. They find it in Mike and his partner, Preds. Mike recounts the older couple's youthful days and the circuitous paths that led them to Rhiw Goch. Both couples marvel at their symbiotic similarities coupled with the occasional idiosyncrasies in their stories. They seem somehow destined to meet as mirrored images that form a veritable dynasty of gay caretakers in the charming landscape they each love.
  
  The book is aptly separated into seasons, delineating both the unpredictable climate of Wales and the equally unknowable journeys that brought them together in this beloved cottage on the hill. Mike Parker's writing is long-winded and indulgent. Parker has a compulsive penchant for commas and semicolons but that overwrought exuberance can be attributed to his genuine passion for the subjects of his story. The more untenable offense is in his normalizing of predatory behavior by one of the older men in which he openly lured and seduced underage boys. Not only does this abhorrent abuse go unchecked but the author even doubles down in his own complicit admission to similar behavior. This is a disturbing and garish blemish on an otherwise charming and wistful tale of perseverance and queer love in the most unexpected of places.
  
  The descriptions of the Welsh countryside are whimsical and evocative with an added bonus of stunning photographs included to bemusingly illustrate the glorious setting he describes so vividly. This is a book for nature lovers and fans of Thoreau and Whitman. If the reader has any affinity for the transcendental, the pages of this love letter to country living will serve nicely as a meditative hike through the waterfalls, rolling fields and sparkling waterways of this uniquely Welsh world.
  
  The result of Parker's diaristic musings is a scenic day trip through the dreamscape of memories and ephemeral beauty of the Red Hill. Like most histories, it is fraught with unsightly blind spots and uncomfortable truths but the prevailing effect is a winsome testimony to the power of nature to humble us all in communal awe and bewilderment. On the Red Hill is a testament to weathering life's unexpected adventures and unforeseeable challenges with those you love to discover a fitting corner in that wilderness where a love like yours can belong.
• 
  Steven Benson

  At its best, this book is powerful.
  
  As a gay man, who lived in Wales, primarily, whilst still being in the closet, and, also, being Anglo-Welsh, by adoption, at most:- I have a complex relationship with Cymru.
  
  Mike Parker also has similar, and seems to be torn between feeling at home as a gay man near Machynlleth and being seen as the perennial outsider: for being gay (AND for being birth-English).His "lady doth protest" vacillating between the two positions gives the game away, poignantly and angrily for me(with systemic, juggernaut homophobia at large).
  
  I do not enjoy nature writing, qua nature writing; but the reflections on being gay and (adopted-Welsh) are beautifully meditative.
  
  At the end of the book is a startling passage on a large number of the (mainly literary) gay men of history coming together and basking in the warmth of Peredur and Mike, in their house inherited from George and Reg, a gay couple of the previous generation; it is how it SHOULD be: gay joy and comradeship(Edward Carpenter, whose vision was very much this, is there too:)).
  
  The psychogeography of gay men; Rhiw Goch, especially in its winter barrenness and bleakness, mirrors the parlous double/underground lives of gay men, lived till Tony Blair, and, still, sometimes, since: and that is in the UK.
  
  The book is a testament to what a vast, desert-like carapace that land we have had stolen from us really is; and how we, AS gay men, have to re-populate and claim it, and gay it up,as did the four gay men in this tale
• 
  Derek Fleming

  Although there are moments of great beauty and insight, unfortunately these are only moments. Ultimately I found this to be quite plodding and unsatisfying.
  
  2.5 stars rounded up to 3 - because I imagine it’s difficult to write any book, let alone a non- fiction one!
• 
  Annie Garthwaite

  This has been on my 'to read' pile for months! And I finally got to it. What a treat. A story of finding home and family in rural Wales. My partner and I retreated from London on Shropshire (not quite Wales but close enough) twenty years ago and have likewise found 'the place' we need to be. Beautifully written and honest - I strongly recommend it!
  
• 
  Baxter Trautman

  Found this between the Bibles and Christian non-fiction at a Catholic monastery. What a find! Absolutely charming, reflective biography/auto-biography of two gay couples, one younger and one older, who found family and home in rural Wales. Just delightful.
• 
  Tim

  Mike Parker's book is unlike anything I've read before. He deftly weaves a memoir with a biography of the central people of his life while taking the reader on a cultural, historic, and geographic tour of his new home in rural Wales. Parker's narrative provides a dream-like, though not unrealistic, image of the countryside, weather, and people that is a beautiful antidote to the dystopian, anxiety-provoking reality of current events.
• 
  Rebecca Wood

  I'm giving the book 3 stars, and i fear that is generous. There's no doubt this book is interesting and some of the relationships are so very touching, and some of the nature descriptions eloquent, but dear me, the detail. There's a level of detail in this book that is neither interesting or useful. It bogs the book down. Specifically all the detail on famous people. I'm not sure what purpose it held. It could have done with another edit. I'm also not sure the chapters and parts work, they feel almost forced. What i did love were the photos interspersed through the book, and the descriptions of the house - the house felt like a fifth character, i was disappointed there were no photos of it. Regardless, an interesting book, but not one I'm sure I'd recommend.
• 
  Redheadreader

  An interesting book, but the level of detail did mean this book went on forever!
• 
  Rhiannon Grant

  Natural history, queer history, and broader cultural histories come together in this specifically located and wide-ranging exploration of a Welsh house and its inhabitants. Highly recommended.
• 
  Simon

  This book. . . Mike Parker is one of the best descriptive writers I have come across. He makes the Welsh farm he and his husband inherited a place that the reader longs to visit. There is a word in Welsh, hiraeth, that coveys the overwhelming longing for Wales experienced by expats. Parker, an Englishman by birth, feels hiraeth six months after he and Peredur started their lives on Red Hill. They had traveled to the continent, and in the midst of a large Italian city Parker suddenly was engulfed by desire for "his" place.
  
  He divides his account into four seasonal reflections. These encompass both the physical surroundings and the history of Reg and George, the couple who ran the farm as a bed and breakfast operation until advanced old age enfeebled them. Peredur was the link to them through which he and Mike inherited the property. The younger couple stood up for them when Reg and George legalized their own union as a civil partnership. Peredur, or "Preds", was close to Reg. He had grown up on an adjacent farm. Parker and he were gobsmacked by the will, but are now long settled in the house (which dates from the 16th century, festooned with messy additions).
  
  There are sections covering Reg and George, who had survived World War II by the time they fell in love. Parker is far more reticent about his partnership with Preds, but he ruminates at length upon the trials of growing up gay in the 80s and 90s. It's all very interesting.
  
  But the seasonal descriptions of life on the Red Hill are magnificent, the sort that make you want to up stakes and retreat to a life bounded by the changes that go almost unnoticed by those of us still living in cities and towns. Parker patiently goes through the gardens he and Preds have revived, and how each plant and tree has a story. Parker swims in the stream that runs through Red Hill, and by the time you finish reading what he has to say about the experience you want to plunge into the cold waters.
  
  The book is intense, fascinating and --- dare I say it? --- important.
  
  Highly recommend.
• 
  Jen

  I haven’t rated this book because it isn’t what I was expecting, and that is no fault of the book or the author. I read this as it was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. In the shortlist guide it is credited with “brak(ing) new ground for nature writing, while also being a welcome addition to writing on Wales” and is described as
  “...the story of Rhiw Goch, ‘the Red Hill’, and its inhabitants, but also the story of a remarkable rural community and a legacy that extends far beyond bricks and mortar. It is a story that celebrates the turn of the year’s wheel, of ever-changing landscapes, and of the family found in the unlikeliest of places.”
  
  I was expecting more of the natural world. Instead, the book is a love story between the author and the land, the author and the house, the author and the gentlemen who bequeathed the house to him, and between those two gentlemen. It is a well written memoir and an interesting read. It just wasn’t the read I was looking for.
• 
  Ivan Monckton

  This is the third book by Parker that I have read, and the third that I have given 3 stars to. In the same way as the other books, this is a mixed bag, with good and bad points. The social and political history of homosexuality over many decades was excellent, the not calling out of George, one of main characters, as a lifelong predator and groomer, especially of young boys is unacceptable. Similarly, the writing on nature is very good, but please, can we not be spared the old cliches about country folk and their love of fox hunting etc? I have earned my living off the land all my life and, like many others, believe blood sports are an abomination. As for the assertion late in the book that farming families occupied their farms for centuries, I suggest the author reads a few books on local history.
• 
  Penny

  I enjoyed the descriptions of landscape and reminiscence of nature. I happily lost myself in a fairyland at once familiar (having grown up in Snowdonia) and new (not having explored the specific area). I found that the splicing of time and topic would rudely cut me away from happy imaginings to speculation over dead men's diary entries and suggestive gossip about people's lives. The book comprises four intertwined stories; told through broken but tenuously linked fragments. It is part autobiographical, and written with such apparent honesty and openness that it borders somewhere between refreshing and surprising.
  I can't help feeling that this would have worked well as four seperate books. However, it is clear that the authors aim was to acknowledge and celebrate the connections between the four strands. In attempting this he has created something unique.
• 
  Kevin Wilcoxon

  For me, this book was best read slow enough to savor. The story of two gay couples, one older and the other not, forms the basis. Added, layer by layer, are the stories of the neighbors and visitors, the community, the land and the gay history of Wales. Though each chapter is specifically titled (e.g., Autumn), the stories are inter-weaved throughout. Especially for visitors and replanted Englanders, Wales is a place of refuge and quiet. Slowing down the pace of life. Enjoying the little things. If you approach the book with this in mind, you are in for a unique treat.
• 
  Mark Ludmon

  A memoir that explores gay history and the joys of life in country through the eyes of a gay writer who relocated from England to Wales, settling in a cottage, Rhiw Goch. The highlight for me was the stories of the gay couple who owned the cottage before, Reg and George, looking back at their lives through the shifting attitudes of the 20th century. I was less interested in the nature writing but the book jumps around, tackling a myriad of topics, from Welsh language and culture and the changing seasons to the challenges of renovating an old property.
• 
  Jayne Gray

  I absolutely loved this book. I thought it might be interesting but I didn't expect to get so caught up in all four lives, and it the place itself.
  Parker has really caught Reg and George well, warts and all but with a gentle touch. He hasn't quite captured himself and Preds, but whoever can be objective about themselves and their loved ones?
  I found myself very much relating to Parker, and had the always delightful experience of finding insights in the book into myself.
• 
  Charlotte

  Mike writes beautifully, the description of land and people is lyrical and he has not stinted on searing self honesty. However I was uneasy with certain stereotypes (all farmers hunt foxes and kill badgers) and in places one wondered whether one had come across a tourist board rep or a farming union member; I cannot place Welsh hill farmers into the same category as American Indians or Australian Aborigines! Nonetheless one cannot fault the writing style and the passion for his subject matter.
• 
  Schopflin

  I loved this - far more than just a memoir and place-history, there are so many well-observed and beautifully-documented insights into myriad things, from gay male history to different kinds of Welshness. There were things I was uncomfortable with, but they didn't overshadow how much I enjoyed the book.