Clare Leighton’s bodgers
I’ve just discovered this lovely, sculptural woodcut of bodgers in the beech woods of Buckinghamshire by Clare Leighton. Weird how you bump into these things: I was researching HE Bates: Leighton published Country Matters with Macmillan the same year that Bates published Down the River and the two books were reviewed side by side. “They are not to be found for the looking,” she wrote. “Like all the good things of this life discovery must come unexpected. How does one find a four-leaved clover? Hunt it for years and it will elude you. But one day, when you have forgotten about it, there it is at your feet. So it is with the bodgers …” And with images of them.
charlesrangeleywilson.com 
2 Responses to “Clare Leighton’s bodgers”
Fantastic. I love Clare Leighton.
Fantastic illustration and even more meaningful to me as I grew up near Hampden Woods where the bodgers plied their trade.