This very rare title is at first sight in poor condition. There is much foxing to the dust cover and some of this has transferred to the inner pages at the front and back. However, the pages themselves are (once past the title page) clean, undamaged and unmarked. The book is from a limited run for the Country Book Club - printed in 1958. The author writes about the country life of his childhood. ==== Phil Drabble, well-known as a naturalist who writes and broadcasts about the countryside, was born in a town on the edge of the industrial Black Country. Despite his unpromising surroundings, he was fired by the same nostalgia for simple things and quiet places that lies deep in in most of us, whether we are town or country-bred. As an only child, he wandered over the the spoil banks of worked-out coal mines, bird nesting and catching butterflies. He caught newts in 'swags' - the mining subsidence pools - and enlivened breakfast by keeping them in a glass bowl on the dining-room tabl