Life on the Levels, by Tony Anderson.

Stripping withies and milking on the bail feature in Tony Anderson’s 2006 book about the characters and the work they do on the Somerset Levels.

Together with Chris Willoughby’s black and white photographs it’s a love letter to a lost (or nearly lost) way of life. The journalist, author and film maker has lived on the moors of the Somerset lowlands and clearly has an affection or the people there.

The books breaks the subject up into sections including the one on the mouth of the River Parrett where the mud horseman of the mud flats is interview and salmon fisherman Bob Thorne’s life is brought vividly to life through the lens of Chris Willoughby.

It’s this combination of the editorial style photographs of some of the county’s finest in their scruffy work clothes plus the evocative landscapes juxtaposed with the dialogue from Anderson’s interviews that make this a book of record. For many of those featured were interviewed in the 1980s and so reveal a way of life that was on the cusp back then of disappearing.

Take Bob Thorne interviewed in 1980. He was a salmon fisherman at Stolford. “I’m the last of the run. Me grandfather and me great-grandfather going back generations, they did it… The butts are in the same place all the time. Mine’s at Black Rock, see. There’s three ranks: there the Mud Rank, the Middle Rank, the outside Rank.” Anderson keeps the phrasing and accents which further adds to the literary texture of the book and making it a celebration of those who choose to live (or lived) down on the moors.

Life on the Levels is published by Birlinn and is still available from all good book stockists and from your local library.

Harry Mottram