Written by P. H. Ditchfield and illustrated by Fred Roe, Vanishing England was an exercise in pure nostalgia that masqueraded as a guidebook. A lament for a lost idyll of thatched roofs and half-timbering, maypoles and coaching inns, it took aim at ‘a busy, bustling world that knows no rest or peace’. The automobile was characterised as a ‘hideous monster’ roaring through village centres, ‘startling and killing old, slow-footed rustics and scampering children, dogs and hens, and clouds of dust strive in very mercy to hide the view of the terrible rushing demon’. ‘In a few years’ time,’
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