Where the Skylark Sings
By Lee Garratt
Dimensionfold Publishing, £12.99

IN THIS slim novel, Lee Garratt takes us on a historical journey through the hills and valleys of Calderdale in Yorkshire and introduces us to the people who lived there.

He begins in 1790, and through the lives of one weaving family, he charts the devastating destruction of the old-style cottage weaving industry with the coming of mass production mills during the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Despite the attempts of the cottage weaving families in the area to prevent the mills destroying their livelihoods and way of life, the inexorable march of the wealthy mill owners is relentless.

Backed by the army and all the forces of the Establishment, they are able to defeat the rebels.

The father of the family portrayed in the book who joins the Luddites, is caught and transported to Australia. His brother, who many years later goes there in search of him, finds his simple grave inscribed with the date 1846.

Garrat writes with a lyrical flair and beautifully captures the landscape and settled way of life in that part of Britain before the onset of industrialisation.

His vivid descriptions of the Luddite attacks on the new mills is reminiscent of similar scenes in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and has echoes of Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists in its straightforward explanation of how the capitalist system works.

Reading it, however, I feel it is more like a sketch for a longer novel or script for a film than a fully fledged novel.

I would have liked to have had more depth and development in the characterisation, as well as a broader historical context.

But that said, it is an enjoyable and illuminating read. Ideal perhaps as an introduction for school students studying this period of history.