Stan was born in 1911 in a small village near the north Somerset coast. When recalling his life in the countryside, he felt that ‘there wasn’t much to do in the evenings … at least not here’. Drawing upon evidence from personal accounts of growing up in the south-west of England in the early twentieth century, this article examines memories of youth in the countryside, with a particular focus on the leisure lives of young people and their experiences of rural space and place. In addition to adding to our knowledge on the lives of rural youth, this study also provides new insights into the complex relationship between people and their environment, and has implications for our understandings of the early formation of a distinct youthful identity in England. The countryside was not simply a backdrop in these recollections; rather, it was formative in how those that grew up in rural communities understood their experience of being young.

中文翻译：

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“没什么可做的……至少这里没有”：二十世纪初在英格兰西南部农村长大的回忆

斯坦于 1911 年出生在萨默塞特北部海岸附近的一个小村庄。回忆起他在乡下的生活，他觉得“晚上没什么可做的……至少这里没有”。本文以 20 世纪初在英格兰西南部长大的个人叙述为基础，考察了农村青年的记忆，特别关注年轻人的休闲生活及其对农村空间和地方。除了增加我们对农村青年生活的了解外，这项研究还为人们与环境之间的复杂关系提供了新的见解，并对我们对早期形成的英格兰独特青年身份的理解产生了影响。乡村不仅仅是这些回忆的背景；相当，