Book review: No Place to Call Home, by Katharine Quarmby
Settlement, as Bruce Chatwin is quoted as saying in Katharine Quarmby's forcefully written book on modern nomads such as gypsies and travellers, is a relatively new habit of humans, who have been settled for only 10,000 years, a blip in the evolutionary calendar.
by Katharine Quarmby
OneWorld
4.5 stars
Rose George
Settlement, as Bruce Chatwin is quoted as saying in Katharine Quarmby's forcefully written book on modern nomads such as gypsies and travellers, is a relatively new habit of humans, who have been settled for only 10,000 years, a blip in the evolutionary calendar.
But it is a new habit that has produced a "settled community" that is hostile, bigoted and suspicious of any peoples that do choose to wander, rove or travel.
Five hundred years ago in England, there were vagabonds from Ireland and others supposedly from Egypt, hence the word "gypsy"(although the gypsy language Rom has more in common with Sanskrit spoken in northern India).
In 1554, the Egyptians Act gave the crown power to remove gypsies from England "by any violent means necessary", and to hang any who stayed for more than a month.
In Romania, the Romany people - related to gypsies (although Quarmby never makes it clear how) - were flogged, burned with lye and made to wear a three-cornered spiked iron collar.