Year in the Life of Glencoe Book

Moving to the Cotswolds has completely dominated my reading in the final months of this year - and this enduring country classic which first appeared in the late 1800s captivated me. My edition was a WW2 economy production but Gibbs' book was re-printed time after time and many copies are available through second-hand shops. Eton and Oxford educated, Gibbs inherited his literary genes from a grandfather who was a successful writer and Liberal MP from Somerset. But it was to Gloucestershire that Arthur moved after Oxford and this book paints hundreds of word paintings of life around Northleach, Bibury and other Cotswold Hamlets. The characters and life-styles he portrays have now vanished, but the topography and many of the buildings are relatively unchanged. Gibbs lived what seems from our perspective an enchanted and untroubled life. Yet it was a brief one. He died suddenly of heart disease at 31.