Clover Stroud: The Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go
at Guille-Allès Library
What is it that makes a home? What is a home without the roots that tie you to a place? What is a home when a family is split?
In her latest memoir, Clover Stroud’s eldest children are leaving home for university. Her husband Pete's work is in America. The only way for Clover and the younger children to live with him is to uproot, leave their rural life near the ancient Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and move to Washington DC.
Forced to leave the home she loves and consider these questions, Clover sets out to explore the place where she lives, walk the Ridgeway, understand a little of the history of her landscape and work out why it is so hard for her to go. In doing so she paints a beautifully layered portrait of family, community and of belonging in a landscape that has drawn people to it for generation after generation.
Clover Stroud discusses her new, profound and moving book with Emma Gannon in which she examines the meaning of home and what it means to her.