How Do You Talk to Ghosts?
What would the countryside look like today, if we hadn’t shut the farmgate on women after WWII? And how exactly do you talk to ‘ghosts’?
Nicola’s second book, Ghosts of the Farm, is a true story of two women who both wanted to be farmers, in the same village in West Berkshire, 60-80 years apart.
It involves a forgotten diary from the rural homefront in the 1940s; pioneering women farmers, increasing coincidences and encounters in the same fields, a friendly, dual ‘haunting’ and the gateways horses lead us through.
Find out how exactly you talk to ‘ghosts’ as Nicola discusses how the book, which has been called ‘an outstanding fusion of memoir and creative historical non-fiction’ came about.
This talk is free to members of Berkshire Family History Society but we request a donation of £5 from non-members.
If you can, could you book via the booking link below. We would be very grateful if you would as this gives us an idea of the number of attendees in advance. This small change also gives non members the flexibility of using card payments if they prefer. We will always welcome all those who arrive on the day and non-members can still pay at the venue, using a cash payment.
Nicola Chester is the award-winning author of On Gallows Down, as well as a Guardian Country Diarist and columnist for the RSPB and BBC Countryfile Magazine, and is
Writer in Residence for Kintbury Chase Eco Centre.
- Wed 10 Jun 2026
- Expired!
- 14:00 - 16:00
Tickets
- £5.00
- The Wharf, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 5AS
- https://www.westberkshireheritage.org/west-berkshire-museum
Category
Organiser
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Newbury Branch - Berkshire FHS
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Email
newbury@berksfhs.org.uk
Speaker
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Nicola ChesterNicola is a Nature writer, school librarian and “imperfect community activist”! From her “leaky rural cottage” in rural West Berkshire, she writes on belonging, protest, access and connection to Nature, with compelling prose that will have you reaching for both your binoculars and a protest placard. Nicola has written regular columns for the RSPB, Guardian and others, contributed essays to numerous anthologies, and last year published her beautiful memoir, ‘On Gallows Down’. She still finds time to run writing workshops and for “activism in the gaps of life”, passionately promoting causes such as a responsible Right to Roam and Wild Service