THE FOLIO SOCIETY

"The coast is clear," she says, and comes down on me like a ton of bricks. I couldn't see nothing but grass. There was such a rocking. I couldn't tell whether I was babe or man . . . It was my first time.' (Michael Poole, orchard worker). This is just one of the pleasures recounted by the inhabitants of Akenfield, so named by the author after the oaks opposite his house, but based on a real working Suffolk village. For others there is joy to be found in watering potatoes - 'The great thing is to produce something before your neighbour does' (Christopher Falconer, gardener) - or admiring one's own handy work - 'a marvellous, beautiful roof, warm in winter, cool in summer...There's nothing like it' (Ernie Bowers, thatcher). But there are sadnesses too, poignantly recalled: the loss of a loved one - 'When the telegram came and I read of his death I couldn't possibly believe it . . . My poor young husband! I had only just got his last letter . . . he was only twenty-five' (Emily Leggett, horseman's widow); the memory of the devastation wrought by the First World War: 'it changed us all . . . we had seen terrible things' (Sam Gissing).

The frankness of the inhabitants is breathtaking, especially that of William Russ the gravedigger: 'When you bury between 180 and 200 people a year you can afford to be honest.' Here, in this moving, funny, sad, eye-opening account of village life in all its guises, are 'the unconsidered trifles from which history is made' (The Guardian).