THE AUTHOR - ROSE BLAKELEY

Rose Blakeley grew up in a 16th century farmhouse near the historic town of Battle, East Sussex. She later moved to Hastings, where she has lived for many years. She has always been an enthusiastic writer and artist and has been gifted with a powerful imagination. She studied art at college, after which, she spent much of her time working on illustrated poems, which she framed and sold at local craft fairs and other outlets. Later, she worked on many commissioned pet portraits and these were all in full colour and very detailed, and the character of the animals was captured with great accuracy. During that time Rose worked as head gardener managing nearly four acres of garden, orchard and ancient woodland where she learned much about plants, trees and wildlife.
She has since worked for many years at The 1066 Bakery, which is a fantastic family business, well established and run in the heart of Hastings.

As a child Rose was constantly surrounded by countryside and grew up in a tiny village, which was still very much in touch with traditional customs.
She spent many years travelling and exploring the British Isles, quite often on foot, always in awe of its beauty and fascinated by the cultures of its past and always greatly inspired by its forever changing seasons.
And so over the years, Rose developed a keen interest in folklore, history and traditional customs, this combined with her love of the seasons, brought together all the necessary elements needed to produce her beautiful and enchanting book, 'A Pathway through the Seasons'. This book contains twenty poems in total, all self penned and Rose has fully illustrated the work herself, both in colour and black/white and although it was a very time consuming project the result was more than worth the effort.

Rose had a very successful book launch in the Old Town of Hastings in May 2008, and her book is still an ongoing success with many outlets, including some in London, Oxford and numerous other cities. She has sold books all over the world and has had many great reviews, some of these from top folk artists in the UK.(see reviews)

Rose has also written for personal occasions such as weddings and for moments of bereavement. Her work has had wonderful, and at times touching responses from all of those involved.
More recently, Rose has collaborated with her husband, Garry Blakeley, where her unique style of writing has combined with his dynamic fiddle playing and traditional in style compositions. They have been working on a project, The Ceremony of May, based on a chapter from Rose's book, which is inspired by May Day and the magnificent Hastings Jack-in-the-Green festival. Having written the lyrics for many of Garry's songs, Rose intends to continue working with him on future projects.
She also plans to write and illustrate a young children's book based completely on the magic of her imagination, which she intends to publish.