Folk Britain: A field guide to curious customs
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Author: Tom Howells
A pocket-sized field guide to Britain’s brilliantly bizarre folk rituals and esoteric customs.Each May in Gloucestershire, contestants embark on an ankle-shattering pursuitof an enormous wheel of cheese down a 26-degree hill. In August, a man utterly covered in burdock seeds and burrs ambles 9 miles through Queensferry, getting progressively drunker on whisky offered by locals. On Bonfire Night, foolhardy residents of Ottery St Mary process through the streets with flaming tar barrels on their backs. These are just a few of Britain’s folk customs, many ofthem centuries old. From the profound to the baffling, this handbook brings together over 100 rituals and traditions that mark changing seasons, unite communities and offer insight into Britain’s wonderfully weird cultural identity.Organised seasonally, this is both a field guide for tourists keen to participate in unusual traditions and a lively, illuminating history of British folk culture.Tom Howells is the author of the hugely popular Ancient Britain for Modern Folk, as well as several other books in the Opinionated Guides series.
ISBN 9781917719445. Hoxton Mini Press. hb. 208 pages. 11.5 x 16.2 cm.
not yet published
A pocket-sized field guide to Britain’s brilliantly bizarre folk rituals and esoteric customs.Each May in Gloucestershire, contestants embark on an ankle-shattering pursuitof an enormous wheel of cheese down a 26-degree hill. In August, a man utterly covered in burdock seeds and burrs ambles 9 miles through Queensferry, getting progressively drunker on whisky offered by locals. On Bonfire Night, foolhardy residents of Ottery St Mary process through the streets with flaming tar barrels on their backs. These are just a few of Britain’s folk customs, many ofthem centuries old. From the profound to the baffling, this handbook brings together over 100 rituals and traditions that mark changing seasons, unite communities and offer insight into Britain’s wonderfully weird cultural identity.Organised seasonally, this is both a field guide for tourists keen to participate in unusual traditions and a lively, illuminating history of British folk culture.Tom Howells is the author of the hugely popular Ancient Britain for Modern Folk, as well as several other books in the Opinionated Guides series.
ISBN 9781917719445. Hoxton Mini Press. hb. 208 pages. 11.5 x 16.2 cm.
not yet published