One Fine Day: A Journey Through English Time

A time-travelling, genealogical adventure, bringing pre-industrial, rural, eighteenth-century England vividly to life on the page. One day Ian Marchant, acclaimed author of books on music, railways and pubs, decided, as all men of a certain age must, to have a dig around his family history. Surprisingly quickly, a web search informed him that his seven-times-great great-grandfather, Thomas Marchant had left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728. So far, so jolly ... Life-loving diarist Thom - who liked a drink and a game of cards - feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. With fascinating detail we learn about Thom''s family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud; about beer, the wife''s nights out, his own job troubles and their shared worries for their children. But as Ian digs deeper beyond the Sussex diary''s bucolic portrait he discovers a subtext - a family descended from immigrants, with antiestablishment politics, who are struggling with illness, political instability and cash crises - just as their country does three centuries on. Rich and immersive, One Fine Day draws a living portrait of Marchant family life in the 1720s and how their England (rainy, muddy, politically turbulent, illnessridden) became the England of the 2020s.

• | Author: Ian Marchant
• | Publisher: Duckworth Books
• | Publication Date: Feb 15, 2024
• | Number of Pages:
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• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781914613555
• | ISBN-10: 1914613554