SKYING YEARS

Description

Based on the cover information, with its author photographThe writer, DAVID EAGAR, trained in geography, ecological research, and copy editing. After a career in government countryside planning, he completed an MPhil in playwriting, specialising in historical fiction and the subgenre of climate fiction: Cli-fi. ‘Environment as creative inspiration: the British climate play (2007-14). With that background, and looking for a medium for his ideas and instinct, David chose the internationally famous landscape artist John Constable, RA. The artist’s sky paintings made on London’s Hampstead Heath, 1820-22, are world-renowned for their realism. In 1999, University of Birmingham meteorologist, John E Thornes, published his research into the weather in Lodon across those three years. Amazingly, Thornes was able to date twelve of John Constable’s sky paintings to a specific day. Here we present in one volume both the original play and the novel that David wrote based on the drama. Novels and short stories have inspired plays, films, and television adaptations. Here is an example of a play inspiring a novel. You may enjoy comparing the two media. Skying Years should appeal to readers of historical or climate fiction, or if you are immersed in drama and looking for something different, something rooted in an understandingof climate change. Skying Years is a story in two halves. You could say there were eight women in John Constable’s life. There was his mother, Ann, his three sisters, Ann, Martha, and Mary, his wife, Maria (Bicknell), his mother-in-law, Maria Elizabeth (Rhudde), and his two daughters who lived tomaturity, Maria Louisa and Isabel. John marries his childhood sweetheart, Maria Bicknell. Anne Fisher, their friend, who is wife of the Revd. Edward (John) Fisher leads us right through the novel. John and Maria grew up in the village of East Bergholt, where the county of Suffolk meets Essex county by the River Stour. John’s father was a miller, and it was around Flatford Mill that the young John Constable perfected his art with numerous drawings and ‘oil sketches’. Best known is his late ‘Hay Wain’ painting, made alongside the mill in 1821. It depictsa wagon cooling its metal rimmed wheels in the river on a sultry summer’s day. The sky is superbly painted with the thorough understanding of clouds and skies, which Constable had mastered. Britain is valued for its landscapes, and here is the British master of representing them. In 2025, John Constable deserves a more honoured place in Britain’s renewed and international connection with its weather, and what our skies foretell and bring. An annual Constable & Turner Climate Award perhaps?