Flower of the Forest by Zena Meyler

To continue the coincidences of my poignant last post. (and that wasn’t a pun) just before the Armistice Service in Kinghorn, we were away down in Yorkshire, staying at a lovely BnB near Pickering called Lowther House.

We ate some fish and chips before strolling around the quaint streets of Pickering, where we found a second hand bookshop. Unable to walk past I got into a conversation with the owner about how difficult it must be to categorize books, when he asked us where we were staying.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘There was an author living at Lowther House at one time. Just a minute,’ and he went off searching along the numerous shelves of books and found:

The copy was a bit battered and so I brought it home to read, aware a week later that the book in my hand was a reflection of the service at the War Memorial a week later when ‘Flowers of the Forest’ was played so beautifully on the bagpipes.

The following morning we went down to breakfast and were astounded to be faced with walls of prints by Jack Vettriano. We asked the lady why this was and she replied,’

‘I was in the forces based up at Inverkeithing, Fife and we both fell in love with his work.’

The oddest additional coincidence was that only two week’s before Roger and I had visited the popular Jack Vettriano exhibition in Kirkcaldy Galleries, the place where JV was first stirred with inspiration to teach himself to paint. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Singing Butler by Jack Vetrianno

The above print can be bought here on his official website.

This amazing artist was self taught, was rejected by the main stream art world but has made millions!

What a story.

As far as the book, it was a great read once you got over several moments which were not very PC in today’s world. It was a good book of its time and evocative of the traumas of life during WW1.