Hope Bourne is renowned as perhaps the greatest Exmoor writer of the twentieth century.For half of her lifetime, Hope lived in and around the village of Withypool on thesouthern side of the Moor. In the late 1960s, at a time of great personal unhappiness, shesought increasing solace in her friends, neighbours and the landscape around her. Findingher daily business restricted to Withypool and its environs, she set about writing atribute to the place. She recounts a time before mobile phones and the internet had cometo dominate daily life, when communication was a gossip over a half-open stable doorand ¿wireless¿ meant the radio. She takes the reader around the village, along the riverand out again around the parish boundaries, describing people, local events, farms andthe changing landscape. Hope¿s love for Exmoor is apparent in the detailed descriptionsand sketches which capture a way of life gradually slipping from living memory.Having so carefully set down the history and living rhythms of the village, Hope¿s manuscriptwas carefully filed away and lost to view for nearly half a century. Then in 2014 DrHelen Blackman, archivist to the Exmoor Society, rediscovered the text at the Society¿sheadquarters, in a nondescript box labelled simply ¿Village Surveys¿. It quickly becameapparent that Hope Bourne¿s love song to her home village was a significant work thatfully deserved to see the light of day. Dr Blackman has subsequently prepared the manuscriptfor publication and chosen a selection of Hope¿s hitherto unseen evocative linedrawings to complement the luminous text.Hope Bourne¿s Exmoor Village will be a ¿must have¿ for Hope Bourne¿s many admirers,and for all lovers of Exmoor, its people and places.