Sixty years on

One of the most timeless of Sven Berlin's oils is Forest Moon, from 1966, a striking landscape which he created with his usual confidence and spontaneity. Here at Leominstead Lake, Emery Down, Sven would come to fish and find solace in the peace.

The December of 1965 had been a Christmas of hard drinking in the New Forest pubs, with Sven passing out on Christmas Eve, an event he blamed on medication he had been taking for bronchitis. His friend John Paddy Browne was encouraging him to complete a collection of poems, The Bone and the Rose, and they made a recording which had to be carefully edited by the late Paul Marsh, to remove the accompaniment of a snoring dog, clinking wine glasses, clocks chiming and cheerful chat littered with some swearing!

There were other village traditions too. Annie Bright, often mentioned in Sven's writings and one of two local spinster sisters, would bring him a celebratory pig's head.

"Last year," Sven recalls in his second svenography Virgo in Exile, "I came in pissed and there it was looking up at me with its blue eye from the sink where it was soaking in salt water. Frightened me to to death!"

No wonder he retreated to the silence and darkness of the lake. A favourite quote from Sven's book on fishing, Jonah's Dream, published in 1964, was recently highlighted by our friend Mike Pope who kindly wrote an appreciation for us, see our earlier blog.

"Fishing therefore is not only a matter of meditation, of peaceful moments... It is also a dream of prehistory."

As we approach the arrival of 2026, let us all hope for a few peaceful moments and find a connection to the timelessness of our world. Happy New Year!