Ah, the Mysteries - I saw it at the Edinburgh Festival, at the Assembly Rooms, and remember Brian Glover, and Jack Shepherd, and the wonderful Robert Stephens as Herod .... stunning stuff, and oh so much longer ago than I care to think about !

I have to admit that I couldn't bring myself to watch LRTC on the box, as I am far too fond of the books, and what I had seen in the Radio Times, and in the way of trailers suggested a rather sanitised and unfaithful rendition of their content. (The NT production is not relevant in the context of considering the TV serialisation, as they are both only adaptations of the true original, each different in their own way ... and the TV production is an adaptation of the book not the play). It seems from the above comments, and a discussion which ensued about the production before a performance of "Down the Lawson Track" in Guildford last night, that I was right to be dubious and avoid it.... the words "soap opera" were used at one point!1

Re the book, the last paragraph of the chapter entitled At the Wagon and Horses was the one that I found memorable...

"Songs and singers have all gone, and in their places the wireless blares out variety and swing music, or informs the company in cultured tones of what is happening in China or Spain. Children no longer listen outside. There are very few who could listen, for the thirty or forty which throve there in those days have dwindled to about half a dozen, and these, happily, have books, wireless, and a good fire in their own homes. But, to one of an older generation, it seems that faint echo of those songs must still linger round the inn doorway. The singers were rude and untaught and poor beyond modern imagining: but they deserve to be remembered, for they knew the now lost secret of being happy on little".

Incidentally, the book is full of other snippets - for instance the chapter on Country Playtime has a number of children's games (mostly singing games), and in "Over to Candleford" various songs such as The Old Armchair, and the Gypsy's Warning are mentioned - as well as full words of The Garden Gate, which was a song published in "English County Songs" by Lucy Broadwood and J A Fuller Maitland in 1893 ..... plenty more examples to be found throughout the book.