SKYING YEARS

Based on the cover information, with its author
photograph

The writer, DAVID EAGAR, trained in geography,
ecological research, and copy editing. After a
career in government countryside planning, he
completed an MPhil in playwriting, specialising
in historical fiction and the subgenre of climate
fiction: Cli-fi. 'Environment as creative inspiration:
the British climate play (2007-14).
With that background, and looking for a medium
for his ideas and instinct, David chose the
internationally famous landscape artist John
Constable, RA.
The artist's sky paintings made on London's
Hampstead Heath, 1820-22, are world-renowned
for their realism. In 1999, University of Birmingham
meteorologist, John E Thornes, published his
research into the weather in Lodon across those
three years. Amazingly, Thornes was able to date
twelve of John Constable's sky paintings to
a specific day.

Here we present in one volume both the original
play and the novel that David wrote based
on the drama. Novels and short stories have
inspired plays, films, and television
adaptations. Here is an example of a play
inspiring a novel. You may enjoy comparing
the two media.
Skying Years should appeal to readers of
historical or climate fiction, or if you are
immersed in drama and looking for something
different, something rooted in an understanding
of climate change.

Skying Years is a story in two halves.
You could say there were eight women in John
Constable's life. There was his mother, Ann, his
three sisters, Ann, Martha, and Mary, his wife,
Maria (Bicknell), his mother-in-law, Maria Elizabeth
(Rhudde), and his two daughters who lived to
maturity, Maria Louisa and Isabel.
John marries his childhood sweetheart, Maria
Bicknell. Anne Fisher, their friend, who is wife of
the Revd. Edward (John) Fisher leads us right
through the novel.
John and Maria grew up in the village of East
Bergholt, where the county of Suffolk meets Essex
county by the River Stour. John's father was a miller,
and it was around Flatford Mill that the young John
Constable perfected his art with numerous drawings
and 'oil sketches'. Best known is his late 'Hay Wain'
painting, made alongside the mill in 1821. It depicts
a wagon cooling its metal rimmed wheels in the river
on a sultry summer's day. The sky is superbly painted
with the thorough understanding of clouds and skies,
which Constable had mastered.
Britain is valued for its landscapes, and here is the
British master of representing them.

In 2025, John Constable deserves a more honoured
place in Britain's renewed and international connection
with its weather, and what our skies foretell and bring.

An annual Constable & Turner Climate Award perhaps?