"A Society under the Magnifying Glass"

In contrast to most places you might stay, the Landmark Trust emphatically does not provide you with a large TV and a set of DVDs: instead you will find a drawer full of puzzles and a shelf of books. At the Bath House a couple of weeks ago, I discovered an especially interesting and relevant selection - a Shire album on bath houses and another on Georgian garden buildings (which I own, coincidentally), a biography of Sanderson Miller, and this history of the adjacent village, Wellesbourne. I should have read the whole thing, really, rather than dipping into it, because it probably ranks as the best history of a single place of its kind I can remember reading. 

It ought to be, I suppose, because the author describes it as the fruit of 30 years of research into the history of Wellesbourne across roughly the century leading up to 1920, plus a few codas extending towards the Second World War. It takes one subject at a time, 'Out with the Poachers', for instance, or 'In Debt at the Manor House', opening out of a story of an individual or family to consider a topic more widely. This would be remarkable enough, but it benefits too from the author's versatility in imagining his way into the lives of his characters - for that is what they are - and how they intersect with others in the village and the society beyond. At least, most of the time it benefits: just occasionally you wonder quite where Mr Bolton has got some detail from beyond his fertile speculation. Everything was changing by 1940, and by the time the Boltons moved into the village, he says, all that remained was the memory of the world that had been, for better or worse.

Every community could do with a book like this. 'Naples of the Midlands', by the way, comes from a Victorian newspaper report, and is far from being a compliment!