One Fine Day

by Ian Marchant (Author)

Format: Paperback / softback 364 pages
Publisher: September Publishing
Imprint: September Publishing
Edition: 2 New edition
ISBN: 9781914613555
Published: 15 Feb 2024
Classifications: Autobiography: general, Biography: historical, political & military, British & Irish history
Weight: 280g
Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 24 (mm)

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

Diarist Thom who liked a drink and a game of cards feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. With immersive 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.