A Book About Smuggling In The West Country

Tabb House 1984, 102pp, £3.95

It is rare for a book to combine the functions of entertaining and informing the reader more or less in equal and such good measure.

Mr Hippisley Coxe has chosen to cover a wide subject from 1700 to 1850 and from Poole to the Bristol Channel. His chosen method; a lucid analysis of the trade and how it was organised on the one hand and vignettes of leading participants on the other is entirely successful.

For this reviewer at least, it cast a fresh light both on the stories and legends with which he grew up and the place in history of the free traders, as we do call them "downalong". A book to go and buy. NJDW