The World About Us

A Cold Wind on the Heath (5x24)

: 05, 1971

When George Borrow lived with the Gypsies over 100 years ago, Petulengro told him: "Life is very sweet brother; who would wish to die?" To find out if life was still sweet among English Gypsies, a group of young men whose connections allowed them to penetrate Gypsy family life in a way never before achieved, lived with and filmed two Gypsy families over a period of months in Kent and Essex during 1970 and 1971. The enquirers found a striking similarity between the present condition of Gypsies and that of nomadic peoples all over the world who have come into direct collision with modern societies. Are the only two solutions integration or destruction?