BY the end of the 20th century, local histories in which older community members reminisced about their village or market town’s rustic past were 10 a penny. Cheaply produced, the books could be patchily interesting, but many were undermined by the verbal diarrhoea that overtook many worthies when let loose with a tape recorder, as well as the writers-cum-oral historians who failed to grasp that the key to doing these things well lay in tight editing.
Nevertheless, all these books, however variable the quality, were spiritual descendants of Ronald Blythe’s. Mr Blythe
