From one of the great chroniclers of our times and our land - the author of Parallel Lines, A Hero for High Times and The Longest Crawl - comes a career-defining book. This is the story of Ian Marchant's great (x7) grandfather, Thomas Marchant who left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728. Life-loving Thomas - who liked a drink and game of cards - feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. Thomas wrote about his family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud, and about the making and drinking of cider. But, as Ian discovers, he was also a Fifteener, a Jacobite sympathiser determined to bring down the monarchy. Ian Marchant tells the story of uncovering a new relative and digs deep into the daily life and political concerns of the 1720s. By exploring the Marchant family's journey - and how their England (rainy, muddy, politically turbulent and illness ridden) became the England of 2021, Marchant discovers just how much we have to learn from our ancestors. By turns funny, lyrical, moving and illuminating, this is a conversation with the dead to find what is still alive. A conversation between a world that stood on the brink of industrialisation and a world that is now exhausted by it.