PRESTEIGNE: Mid Border Arts at The Assembly Rooms

Sunday 16th July, 2023

2:30pm

Event information

Ian Marchant has written about the romance of the railways, the longest pub crawl in Britain, and the history of British hippiedom, 'A Hero For High Times'. His latest book, 'One Fine Day - A Journey Through English Time' was published by September in April 2023. He is a regular diarist for the Church Times, and an intermittent presenter on Radio Four’s Open Country.

Ian will be reading from and talking about his latest book, 'One Fine Day,' in which the Author learns about time-keeping, why thermometers matter, Frost Fairs, strange appearances in the sky, how easy it is to lose one's pocket and one's wigge, dry hygiene and its consequence, how to grow your own underwear, the History of Fishes (and how to feed them with turds), rhubarb, village cricket, prizefighting, hare coursing, smock racing, turnips and why they matter almost as much as thermometers, how Dr. Johnson spent his time as an undergraduate, what to do with an advowson, how to collect a folksong and then sing it, the Divine Right of Queens, the fate of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, emmets, zenanas, mountebanks, what to do if your master is a man with out honour, how failed rebellions end, why childhood innoculation is an age-old good thing, and sundry other remarkable persons and places.

‘Bloody marvellous.’
Nicholas Lezard, New Statesman

‘Ian Marchant is one of England’s most original writers.One Fine Day is a masterwork, a rich plum pudding of a story which enfolds the ingredients of a personal quest, the story of a hybrid family identity, of our industrial history and our current political mess. Marchant is frequently very funny and also deadly serious … weaving together a forgotten past with not just his own life, but that of a nation. Not often do writers get to pull off such a masterly leap from the specific to the universal. Marchant has written a book everyone should read, a complex, joyful, polyglot of a book for our troubled times.’
Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch

‘A unique and exhilarating exploration of time and love; Ian Marchant conspires with his diarist ancestor to bring to life the eccentricities and the importance of the early eighteenth century.’
Richard Beard, author of Sad Little Men and The Day That Went Missing

Broad Street
Presteigne
LD8 2AD
info@midborderarts.com

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