SO, the study of our local poet, Thomas Hardy, is to be removed from the GCSE syllabus, to be replaced by ‘more contemporary poets’.
Thomas Hardy wrote his many novels and poems to record a way of Dorset Village life that he saw disappearing during the Industrial Revolution.
He felt that this was important. He knew that the way of life of the country folk in Dorset would be gone forever.
The humour and passion in his novels are a tribute to this.
Who can forget the filmed versions of ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ or the tragic ‘Tess of the Durbervilles’?
I studied Hardy’s work as a trainee teacher in the late 1970s and felt proud that he was our ‘local poet’.
Perhaps they will now ban Dickens and Shakespeare as being, ‘too old-fashioned’?
‘The New’ is not always better. Shame on them.
VALERIE BLACKWOOD
Frederica Road, Bournemouth
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