Covering the period between the two world wars, the Second World War itself and the fifteen years that followed, The Deaf Doctor focuses primarily on Marian’s formative years, which coincided with farming in the 1950s: the last decade of traditional mixed farming before the use of chemicals and more efficient mechanisation. Wage increases, monoculture and increased efficiency meant that fewer people worked on the land by the 1960s, fundamentally changing the texture of everyday life. Country sports were the chief pastime of rural communities then when most still adhered to the seasons and there was a slower pace of life with few distractions. The Deaf Doctor also provides an account of Marian’s father, his pre-war way of life and his experiences in the Far East as an army doctor during the Second World War, serving as a prelude. Depicting the social history of an age in which tradition still held considerable sway while powerful undercurrents were working in the opposite direction. The ’50s were in many ways an extension of the ’30s way of life, until they weren’t.
