Fascinating thread. I didn't read the book until after the year 2000 so I wasn't swept along by the earlier enthusiasms - so my opinions are those of someone who never got to meet Lloyd or hear him sing live.

Yes, it has flaws, it can be polemic. Yes, there are some inaccuracies and a tendency to wax lyrical (who's immune to those?). Yes, footnotes would be nice, though given Lloyd's unbelievable output on all kinds of subjects (how many radio scripts could he produce in a single year?) they may have just been too time consuming. But the main thing I love about the book is that it's the work of an obvious enthusiast - passionately and poetically written with great faith in 'the people'. Did it - as has been influentially argued - return the folk revival to Cecil Sharp's values and definitions? Probably, yet there's enough love in there for the work of named, literate, industrial songwriters such as Tommy Armstrong (though with claims for anonymous, often Irish, sources of inspiration) to demonstrate that Lloyd remained far less prescriptive than earlier collectors.

But, like so many great books, it has the capacity to both enthral and exasperate - isn't that just a wonderful combination?