WENDOVER: Real Magic Books

Tuesday 23rd April, 2024

6:30pm

Event information

Join us for a special Book Group LIVE as we discuss One Fine Day: A Journey Through English Time with author Ian Marchant and Richard Beard.

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.

'A unique and exhilarating exploration of time and love ... elegiac, consistently funny, deeply moving.' Richard Beard, author of Sad Little Men

Ian will be in conversation with Richard Beard, and will be signing books. There will be time for an audience and author discussion where we'll chat about the book. If you'd like to read the book before the event we've got plenty of copies here in the shop and you can also get yours via bookshop.org here https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11100/9781914613555 which still supports us here at Real Magic. The bar will be open. Hope to see you then.