The Whittington Show

Once again, it was a fine afternoon for the annual show at Whittington, the parish where we lived between 1983 and 1994. The queue of vehicles stretched back to the A40: Rose Randle, of the famous Press, thought she had never seen so many cars parked. It never ceases to amaze me how such beautifully printed books emerge from a former gardener's shed, the contents of which are in such seeming disarray. But there is method in the Randle madness: in its 40 years or so the Whittington Press has earned a worldwide reputation, and the Open Day is a magnet for collectors and lovers of fine printing. The Show too, spilled over from the Village Hall and Green into the adjacent field, attracts its own regular adherents from all round the place, not just the many Parish alumni who turn out.