In 1944, near the country bus stop where I used to wait with other five- and six-year-olds for the bus down to our village school, lived a blacksmith. Miss Potter, the schoolmistress (her name an indication of her distant ancestors’ trade), explained to us what he did. He was still necessary in those times, when cars were sleeping the war out in people’s garages, and the milkman, the butcher and other much-welcomed deliverymen brought rationed supplies in horse-drawn carts. By the time you could buy sweets again without a ration book, the blacksmith was gone.

That is just one example of the disappearance of time-honoured crafts that James Fox brilliantly chronicles in this book. But in chapter after chapter, Fox reminds the reader that the direction of change is not all one-way. In almost every corner of our overpopulated and over-industrialised island, a few people can be found who buck the trend, cultivating time-honoured skills. As the economist E F Schumacher wrote, ‘Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.’

Fox pursues this theme in locations as disparate as Wester Ross, the Chilterns (including High Wycombe, once renowned for chair making), Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, Loughborough (once a centre of bell casting), Cambridge, the Isle of Man (where he meets a watchmaker), a cask-making workshop in Northern Ireland,