from the book's blurb: Its central figure ... an old East Anglian farm-hand, whose life-story is mainly told in his own words. At seven years of age Mark Thurston was already a worker in the fields, and at seventy-seven he is still active, vivid in his memories, and possessed of a very individual point of view. He can remember, with a clarity and detail that makes his words as informative as they are entertaining, the days of scythe and flail, gleanimng and horkey, milling and brewing and baking.
HAPPY COUNTRYMAN is more than the picture of an heroic old man: it is also a picture of the village in which he lived. Larkfield (under another name) is shown in the guide-books as a 'picturesque' village, complete with ruined windmill and Green. Mr Warren has looked beneath the picturesqueness and tried to bring Larkfield to life in all its teeming diversity - a typical village in the East Anglian corn-belt, where the surrounding fields are still a chequerwork of thriving arable and where all the year's activities still lead up to the colourful climax of harvest.