Curator's Blog: Restless Brilliance
By Sarah Harvey, Curatorial & Learning Officer
My journey with author J.A. Baker began back in 2018 when I joined Chelmsford Museum. I had spent the last eight years working at the Science Museum in London but now, with my second child born in 2017, I was ready to give up the commute and when the position of Curatorial Officer was advertised in my local museum I jumped at the opportunity.
As part of my job interview, I was asked to come up with an exhibition proposal about a little-known Chelmsfordian. I did some research online but just seemed to come up with the same well-known characters: Marconi, Anne Knight, Grayson Perry. Then my husband said “What about the guy that wrote The Peregrine, didn’t he come from Chelmsford?” Despite living in Chelmsford for eight years, I’d never heard of The Peregrine or its author J.A. Baker before. I had no idea that the book had been sat on the shelf in my living room for years, so I certainly hadn’t realised that it was written in Chelmsford by an author who lived almost his whole life in the town. So, Baker became the subject of my exhibition proposal, I got the job and six years later (after some gentle nagging) it’s very exciting to have finally realised the exhibition.
In many ways it’s surprising that I hadn’t come across the book before. I’ve had a lifelong love of birds and birdwatching, and a keen interest in protecting our natural world, a title like The Peregrine should have jumped out at me. I’m also a fan of many of the writers and conservationists who have been inspired by and championed Baker’s work over the years, people like the author Robert MacFarlane, film maker Werner Herzog, and conservationist and TV presenter Chris Packham. Within these nature writing and conservation circles, Baker is lauded as one of the most important and original British writers of the last 60 years but he is still little-known outside of this sphere.
As I began to research Baker, I quickly found his dedicated local fans. David Simmonds created his website www.jabaker.co.uk in 2015 as a personal project to spread the word about Baker’s work. It’s a fantastic resource which pointed me in the direction of the brilliant biography of Baker “My House of Sky” written by Hetty Saunders and, more importantly, to the University of Essex which holds the J.A. Baker archive.
Again, I was left wondering how I had failed to hear of Baker for so long. I studied for my MA at the University of Essex so why hadn’t I stumbled across him then? It transpired that the archive was donated in 2013, some years after I studied and worked on the campus, but it was a pleasure to find that it was now in the care of an old colleague and friend, Dr Sarah Demelo, Curator of ESCALA, Art and Special Collections for the Albert Sloman Library.
It turned out that Sarah was also a huge fan of The Peregrine and shared my interest in telling Baker’s story. She had been actively looking for an opportunity to get the archive on display outside of the University campus for the first time, so the exhibition became a co-curated project between the University of Essex and Chelmsford Museum.
When I first read The Peregrine, I didn’t find it an easy read. It is set out as a diary charting one winter of following and observing peregrine falcons and I found the diary style repetitive. But the language and description in it is incredibly vivid and compelling.
Baker doesn’t name any places directly in the book but I knew that it was about the Essex coastline and estuaries, an area that I have grown to love since I moved to Essex and where I regularly go birdwatching myself. Baker’s deep love of the area comes through in all his writing, from his personal letters through to his diaries and published works. His descriptions elevate the landscape and almost make it seem exotic and otherworldly.
I read his second book, The Hill of Summer, during lockdown and, whilst it’s acknowledged that it is a far weaker book than The Peregrine, I loved being able to access the landscape through his words when I wasn’t able to access it physically due to restrictions.
It is through the archive that we have been able to work out exactly where Baker was birdwatching. He kept detailed diaries and also meticulously annotated Ordinance Survey maps with his regular routes and bird sightings. Almost all of Baker’s birdwatching was done within a days bike ride from Chelmsford, along the Blackwater Estuary and in the woods around Chelmsford. I realised that the areas he had been birdwatching in the 1950s and 1960s were the same areas that I take my children birdwatching now as I try to inspire that love of nature in them.
When Baker was writing, he was scared that the peregrine falcons, and many other local and visiting bird species, were on the brink of destruction. His anger at their plight is part of what gives The Peregrine such power and impact. One of the things I have enjoyed most about this project has been reaching out to and forging partnerships with fellow Baker enthusiasts and nature charities that are today working to improve awareness of his work and to restore and protect our bird populations.
I hope the legacy of the exhibition is that future generations will have been inspired to love and care for nature in the same way that Baker did. One of my children asked for binoculars for Christmas which made me very happy, so I will certainly continue to drag them out to experience the wonder of our local wildlife, woods and coastline at every available opportunity.