"Walter"
He liked Mrs Gaskell, especially North and South, though he didn't take to Jane Austin or the Brontes (even though he had a very tatty three volume 1st edition of an Austin (can't remember which one) with one of those heavily imprinted identification stamps on the cover reading 'Property of the North Walsham Working Men's Library'.
Over the 20 years we spent with him, we became convinced that he was exactly the audience Dickens, Hardy, et al were writing for.
He once told us that "two of the greatest crimes in literature were the hanging of Tess an the drowning of Maggie Tulliver" - you can't say fairer than that!
He'd read all Dickens and Hardy at least half-a-dozen times, except Jude; "couldn't face all that bloomin' misery again".
We gave him a copy of 'Cold Comfort Farm' and 'Precious Bane' which he took to like a duck to water and spoke about every time we saw him.
Now I've got a lump in my throat - damn.
My mother was Liverpool Irish - the only time she lived anywhere else was during the forties when my father moved us down to Finchingfield in Essex for the duration of the war.
Don't know where she got "nesh" from, interesting that it should have been used in The Forest of Dean
Jim Carroll