What rare learning John Breay has...the whole mood and air of the Victorian Church of the north-west can be breathed. What fun the man Brunskill is, with little insights into famous men like Sharp, Villiers and Harvey Goodwin...wonderful to meet a clergyman whose expertise is the shoeing of horses...The self-educated man who left school at fifteen and is interested in Wordsworth and Ruskin...can hold down the job of a headmaster and can write English prose in letters to the Press!' -The Revd Professor Owen Chadwick