It started out as an online diary on the BBC Shropshire website. A thirty three year old man, obsessed with Bingo, stationary and Countdown, living with his Mother in a small village. He decides to quite his job, take his life savings and embark on a worldwide quest to convince everybody outside Shropshire that if they lived life like the people in his village do they would be much happier. It sounds naive, but he managed to get quite a following and now a big chunk of China, a little bit of Amsterdam, an all-girl Australian Beatles tribute band and a Dutch chapter of the Hells Angels all see Morris Telford as the man with the answers.

The author recalls her childhood in England during the last two decades of Queen Victoria's reign.