"The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer"

I mentioned last week the impending publication by Amberley of my great-great-grandfather's diary: well, now here's what it will look like. I'm told the book will be in my hands in four weeks' time.

A kind friend let me use her Claude Hayes Haymaking on the cover. Ideally, there would be a portrait of the diarist on the front, but there is none: so little is known about him apart from the two diaries - discovered by chance - which make up this volume! As I say in my introduction, it's a lot down to the fact that my father never knew his grandfather; my grandfather never knew his, nor his father his.