During 1933-1936, Dorothy Hartley was commissioned by the Daily Sketch newspaper to write articles describing the English countryside, old English crafts and customs, country foods and country ways (with the odd excursion to Wales, Scotland and Ireland). She did her research in the British Museum (she had by then written several books of social history) and on the ground, travelling around the country on her sturdy bicycle, staying with her subjects, or under a hedgebank if no other choice. These articles were to form her knowledge-bank which she used in several books that came out during the...