I HAVE SPENT a few days in the company of the Marchant family; and it’s been a riot. One Fine Day by Ian Marchant isn’t a book so much as a gloriously eccentric meander through an entire library. Following a cancer diagnosis and the discovery of the diary of his “seven-times-great great-grandfather”, Marchant mulches us into the roots of a family tree that grows and twists through the history of England since the 17th century. And it is not always pretty. Marchant steers us away from an England that he thinks is in danger of becoming “a boutique festival sort of place, an artisanal gin Michelin-starred pub, Airbnb Country Living place, a defanged, disenchanted landscape”. Instead, he offers us something much weirder, deeply enchanting, and fully fanged.
The story of the Marchants, from immigrant Belgian smelters to yeoman Sussex farmers to naval surgeons and bakers, also incorporates wildly entertaining digressions on subjects as diverse as the benefits of feeding faeces to fish, the history of iron production in Wallonia, the genesis of the smallpox vaccine in early-18th-century Istanbul, the birth of empirical science, and instructions on how to weave your own pants out of flax.
© Julian Dicken, Moonshake Design 2023One of Julian Dicken’s black-and-white illustrations for the book under review
One Fine Day reminded me a little of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s pioneering 1978 work of “Annales School” history, Montaillou. In both cases, the example of a rural community casts light on much wider and deeper historical forces at play. In One Fine Day, Marchant uses his ancestors as a lens through which to observe, from the grass-roots, as it were, the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, dynastic geo-politics, and religious dissent: a bit like Montaillou, but much funnier. Marchant’s book made me laugh out loud in many places. He also moved me to tears.
Marchant’s closing chapter could come across as a pubby panacea, but it is done with such verve, wit, and good grace that he is able to carry the reader along with him. Whether he is describing 17th-century women’s undergarments, turnips, or Brexit, Marchant is often caustic, always compassionate, polemical, and not always polite. He is humane, invigorating company, and a joy to read.
The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy is a Team Vicar in the Savernake Team Ministry. He is the author of Tales of a Country Parish (Short Books, 2022) (Books, 1 April 2022, Podcast, 14 April).
One Fine Day: A journey through English time
Ian Marchant
September Publishing £20
(978-1-912836-99-4)
Church Times Bookshop £18