Fred Kitchen

(William) Frederick Kitchen (28 December 1890 – 16 September 1969) was an English farm labourer and writer. His best known work is Brother to the Ox, which has been adapted for radio and television.

Life and work Kitchen was born in Edwinstowe in Sherwood Forest in 1890 to a Methodist family. Kitchen started out as a horseman but went on to work around collieries, and on railways. In 1925, after 13 years working in industrial settings, he became a farm labourer again, in Hooton Levitt, and at Maltby Main.

Brother to the Ox is an autobiographical account of a countryman's life during the first half of the twentieth century in Northern England. Unromantic and unconcerned with presenting country living as idyllic as more middle class writers of the time had generally presented it, it may be considered an 'anti-pastoral work'. Unusual for its time, it is a first-hand account of Kitchen's life in coking factories, on the railways, working as a cowman and in mining villages, moving from town to town in search of work. Critic H E Bates wrote of the book: "Mr. Kitchen writes as the grass grows and Brother to the Ox will take its place, for exact and simple beauty, with the best interpretations of the countryside."

The book's title comes from the long poem "The Man With the Hoe" by Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes. Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

The book was adapted by ITV (Brother to the Ox, 1981).

His life story was dramatized from his journals for BBC Radio by Stephen Wakelam, broadcast in two week long serials as Journal of a Joskin (2013 and 2015).

Books Brother to the Ox (1939) London: J. M. Dent Life on the Land Nettleworth Parva What the Countryman Wants to Know Songs of Sherwood Foxendale Farm Winter at Foxendale More Adventures at Foxendale Farm The Farming Front Jesse and his Friends Goslington, portrait of a village The Ploughman Homeward Plods (novel, 1960) London: J. M. Dent The Ploughman The Commoners Settlers in England Indian Scenes