The English tend either to look towards the Lord in his moated castle or the poor peasant at his gate, to polarise between nob and mob, capitalist and communist. This book takes us into another English landscape. It is the tale of an ordinary family, quietly proud of their parish, pub and position, who treat their children as equals. The only extraordinary thing about them is that they have kept hold of their stories, which now reach back over fifteen generations. This chronicle told backwards from yesterday s gossip to the times of the Tudors reveals a contented England, lived in and loved by a family of vicars and farmers, colonels and brewers, naval commanders and horse-lovers. It is also an honest narrative, recording scandals and suicides beside occasional successes, be they on the battlefield, in the boardroom or the bedroom.