As a country lad growing up in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland of the 1960s/70s - a very rural place a lot more socially sedate than nowadays - Kilvert's world actually seemed very familiar to me and even more so now in nostalgic retrospect as a lot of the older ways died with the older folk (who would have had a lot in common with Kilvert's contemporaries) of my childhood passing.

A country clergyman born in 1840, Kilvert spent much of his time visiting parishioners, walking the lanes and fields of Herefordshire and writing in his diary. Kilvert barely knows there are such things as little boys, but he tells us all about the little girls in his parish. There was a stamping and a scuffling, a mass of struggling men swaying to and fro, pushing and writhing and wrestling while the coffin sank and rose and sank again. Kilvert is a keen observer of place (in this case, mostly the Hay valley area of Wales) and a great describer, and often quite amusing. So there are a lot of impassioned descriptions of pretty women where the poor guy’s longing is embarrassingly obvious.

Full of passionate delight in the natural world and the glory of the changing seasons, his diaries are as generous, spontaneous and vivacious as Kilvert himself. The Cornish Holiday was also published in 1989, edited by Richard Maber and Angela Tregoning and published by Alison Hodge. Partly because life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it almost seems a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass altogether away without some such record as this, and partly too because I think the record may amuse and interest some who come after me.

However, next day Kilvert joins in the fun: "I was out early before breakfast this morning bathing from the sands. The Diary, which paints a unique picture of country life in mid-Victorian times, has come to be recognised as a minor classic; its author has been compared to Dorothy Wordsworth, whom he admired, and even Pepys. Francis Kilvert spent his early years at Hardenhuish, was educated privately, went in due course to Wadham College, Oxford, and entered the Church.He was rather shy and constrained and sat for a long time still with the tumbler of beer in his hand and looking at nothing. It came unsought, unbidden, at the meadow stile, it was one of the flowers of happiness scattered for us and found unexpectedly by the wayside of life. I know not why I was so happy, nor what I was expecting, but I was in a delirium of joy, it was one of the supreme few moments of existence, a deep delicious draught from the strong sweet cup of life.

It’s tragic that so many of the diaries were destroyed - so many stories are left unfinished and that is frustrating.

It came silently, suddenly, and it went as it came, but it left a long lingering glow and glory behind as it faded slowly like a gorgeous sunset, and I shall ever remember the place and the time in which such great happiness fell upon me. This new edition of William Plomer’s original selection contains new archival material as well as a fascinating introduction illuminating Kilvert’s world and the history of the diaries.

The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged.Once or twice I thought the whole mass of men must have been down together with the coffin atop of them and some one killed or maimed at least. I found this book/diary incredibly interesting, it helped that I knew many of the areas spoken about around Clyro and Bredwardine. Kilvert is so lovely and enjoys his life to crying at the beauty of it - all the pretty children he loves and the trees and fields he loves and his funny welsh parishioners who tell him such great stories.