What rare learning John Breay has... the whole mood and air of the Victorian Church of the north-west can be breathed. What fun the man Brunskill is, with little insights into famous men like Sharp, Villiers and
Harvey Goodwin... wonderful to meet a clergyman whose expertise is the shoeing of horses... The self-educated man who left school at fifteen and is interested in Wordsworth and Ruskin... can hold down the job of a headmaster and can write English prose in letters to the Press '
--The Revd Professor Owen Chadwick