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One Fine Day : A Journey Through English Time - Ian Marchant

One Fine Day

A Journey Through English Time

By: Ian Marchant

Hardcover | 6 April 2023

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A time-travelling, genealogical adventure,
bringing pre-industrial, rural, eighteenth-century England vividly to life on
the page.


One day Ian Marchant, acclaimed author of books
on music, railways and pubs, decided, as all
men of a certain age must, to have a dig around his family history.
Surprisingly quickly, a web search informed him that his seven-times-great
great-grandfather, Thomas Marchant had left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728.
So far, so jolly ...


Life-loving diarist Thom - who liked a drink and a game of cards - feels
recognisably Marchant to Ian. With fascinating detail we learn about Thom's
family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud; about beer, the wife's
nights out, his own job troubles and their shared worries for their children.
But as Ian digs deeper beyond the Sussex diary's bucolic portrait he discovers
a subtext - a family descended from immigrants, with anti-establishment
politics, who are struggling with illness, political instability and cash
crises - just as their country does three centuries on.


'When I was reflecting late one January evening
on the differences between Thom and me, I realised the unbridgeable thing that
comes between us is industrialisation. He lived right at its beginning, while I
am living somewhere towards its end. Old Thom Marchant was one of the last
people before industrialisation to understand how his world worked - and how to
be largely self-sufficient in it. He knew where his food came from, his fuel,
his water, his clothes. He knew how the welfare system worked, and was part of
its administration; he knew who looked after the roads, too. He collected
taxes. He was not separate from the system, but part of it.'


Rich with immersive detail, One Fine Day
draws a living portrait of Marchant family life in the 1720s and how their
England (rainy, muddy, politically turbulent, illness-ridden) became the
England of the 2020s.


Industry Reviews
'Elegiac, consistently funny, deeply moving.' - Richard Beard; 'Ian Marchant is one of England's most original writers. One Fine Day is a masterwork.' - Monique Roffey; 'I enjoyed it hugely, and was strangely moved.' - Deborah Moggach; 'Bloody marvellous.' - New Statesman

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