Join us for a conversation with storyteller of vanished rural traditions Robert Ashton! Robert will be talking to us about his career working on local farms and his book Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay?, which is an ode to rural life.

Tickets are £7.55 each (including booking fee). Available to book from Southwold Library, from Southwold Arts Centre, or টিকিটসোর্সে অনলাইনে.

Robert Ashton lives near the Suffolk coast, in the town where he grew up. He worked on local farms in his teens, studied agriculture at college and spent the first decade of his career selling fertiliser. His interest in George Ewart Evans dates back to his early teens, when his parents bought him a copy of Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay. Already an established business author, Robert graduated from the UEA with a Creative Writing MA in 2020. A Quaker, Robert is driven by a strong sense of social justice and has helped establish a number of social enterprises.

Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay? is an ode to rural life, charting traditions of the past, how they were lost and why we need to reconnect. Exploring the relationship between everyday items and the communities that make them, Robert Ashton provides a snapshot of twenty-first century England. Where are the people who grow barley, milk cows and produce wool? How have their farming methods become less ethical, sustainable and natural over time? And what are we doing today to reverse that change? Inspired by George Ewart Evans’s Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, Ashton gives voice to local people and travels rural Suffolk in search for innovation, interweaving his own personal connection to Evans and to the land. Part memoir, part social history, Ashton’s thought-provoking book is a manifesto for why, against all odds, we need to step back in order to progress.

This event takes place at Southwold Arts Centre, St Edmund’s Hall, IP18 6JP.

Southwold Literary Festival has been organised in collaboration with Southwold Arts Centre, Friends of Southwold Library, and Suffolk Community Libraries.