Great Hockham
Great Hockham lies six miles south-east of
Watton in the
Brecklands.
The novelist Christopher Bush was
born in Great Hockham in 1885. He was educated at Thetford Grammar and at King's College London and fought
in both world wars.
He wrote over 50 detective novels using his real name
- but also wrote nine novels about Breckland
life using his pen-name Michael Home. The first of these was entitled God and the
Rabbit and was published in 1934 and concerned the
adventures of a local boy called Harry Francis. In the novel
Bush
transforms Great Hockham into the fictional village of 'Heathley'
- portraying the isolation and poverty of rural life
at the turn of the century.
He also wrote 3 other autobiographical novels entitled:
Autumn Fields, Spring Sowing and Winter
Harvest.
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