Book I of The Brensham Trilogy. A wonderful and exuberant chronicle of an English market town between the wars, distinguished with a historic abbey, a winding river and bustling pubs with a cast of characters that could have stepped out of Hogarth or Shakespeare... Born in 1907, John Moore grew up in Tewkesbury at a time when small English market towns still had a distinct and sturdy life of their own. Mass travel, mass media and the changes brought about by two world wars would gradually destroy this self-contained rural society, but Moore caught and preserved it in captivating detail.