SOMEONE sneezes at the Old Forge Cottage. Is it the new baby? Mrs Granger at the tea shop has a homemade remedy. Grandma Brown at the almshouse has run out of sugar. No problem, because Ted the driver will exchange a cupful for some rhubarb. We can imagine this village—let’s call it Loveby, because it survives on caring and helping.
Thousands of such communities across this land after the First World War knew the value of self-sufficiency and the necessity of using all the skills and experience collectively available. Villages through the decades after 1918 survived on communal values and these were driven by a particular brand of economics, made up of questions and cheeriness.
'There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain
