Llamas but no locals

Richard Askwith is Associate Editor of the Independent and lives in a small Northamptonshire village; presumably he commutes. After a year’s absence abroad he returns to his village and finds that two loved neighbours have moved, eight houses (out of 94) have been sold, and five more have ‘For Sale’ notices outside them.

The pub had closed; the sub-Post Office was closing. (The school and the shop had closed years ago.) … One nearby farm — which hadn’t even had electricity when I first visited it a decade or more ago — had become a state-of-the-art equestrian centre.

‘And what’s wrong with that?’ demands his wife, who is a sensible Chorus throughout this book. He can’t quite say, but begins to wonder whether his idea of rural England, hazy enough anyway, indeed his idea of ‘Englishness’ (that increasingly recurring topic these days) has any basis at all. He decides to go on a quest in order to find out.