Documentary:The Lady of Exmoor, Miss Hope Bourne.

This is a documentary from the late 90's (there are four parts) about a small but fiercely independent English woman who lived alone in a small caravan on Exmoor. She survived on the land, eating fish from the river and any rabbits she could shoot and she proudly declared that she never borrowed money nor ever claimed a penny in benefits of any kind despite often subsisting on less than £1 a week!

Hope Bourne (1920 - 2010) is a symbol of the resilient, proud and ungovernable spirit of the English people. She loved nature but was not romantic about it, as she shows in this film; recounting the gory details of nature red in tooth and claw. Therefore she supported hunting as an essential part of the local economy, uniting the community and bringing man and nature together under the same law and spirit. She also scolds the bureaucrats in Brussels whose imposition of the metric system robbed the English people of their mathematical heritage which she points out is as much a part of a culture as music or language.

Such people are too rare. There was not a topic on which she spoke in this film with which I disagreed, and I found her insights on God particularly wise and moving. Bless her and long may England live as long as she spawns such wonderful and strong spirited people as Hope Bourne.