Saddleworth Sketches

In this deeply personal journey across our nation's most forbidding and most mysterious terrain, William Atkins takes the reader from south to north, in search

First published in 1982, this book is concerned with the tensions between continuity and change in customs, rituals, beliefs of artisans, factory workers and se

Many of our old customs are fading away into the dim mists of antiquity, and all but the name will soon be forgotten. This is much to be regretted, because they

"Rushbearing is an old English ecclesiastical festival in which rushes are collected and carried to be strewn on the floor of the parish church. The tradition d