I finished reading it yesterday. The "quotes and nothing but" approach works pretty well in the main – I was a good 200 pages in before my interest began to flag a little. It's the sort of the book you're unlikely to be gripped by and devour in one sitting, but on the other hand the multiple perspectives make it a more authoritative text - maybe even a definitive one. And it means you don't have to read the chapters in the right order; it's a very enjoyable book just to dip into.

If, like me, you're under 40 and a folkie, like me, this is a book that will make you feel very jealous indeed: it really does chart a bygone golden age for folk in this country, a scene that even Americans (like Tom Paxton) were envious of.

Anecdote after anecdote tells of people starting folk clubs that had audiences of 50+ on their opening nights, of folk clubs in out-the-way locations packing audiences in on a Monday night on a weekly basis, of performers telling of being able to quickly make a national name for themselves within months of playing their first floorspot.

Hence the rather elegiac tone of the last couple of chapters