THE PAST

'We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.' 

JL Carr, A Month in the Country, p.85. 

THE POLITICS OF VILLAGE CHURCHES

'Every week that passes, you can bet your life that, somewhere in this land, there's a first-class row bubbling up about what someone wants in and someone else wants out of a village church.' 

JL Carr, A Month in the Country, p.27.