Dinah Birch

From the London Review dated 20 April 2006

Land of Pure Delight

Printed in 1958, the Bible given to me as a child was illustrated with photographs of the Holy Land. I was particularly taken with the ‘Native House near Bethlehem’. A woman broods over the baby on her lap, while her husband steadily returns the viewer’s gaze. This calculated image, every shadow still imprinted on my memory, seemed both homely and exotic. Tethered to the stone wall, next to the manger, was what I recognised as a white-faced Hereford cow, like those which grazed around the farm where I was growing up. The incongruity was normal. Places I saw in my Bible (‘A Fountain at Nazareth’, ‘Road from Jerusalem to Jericho’), and heard about at Methodist Sunday school, were as familiar to my imagination as the villages and farmhouses where my grandparents, aunts and cousins lived. Some of the local fields had biblical names. My uncle’s land included a boggy patch known as Jericho, not far from our own Home Close. [ read more . . . ]

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