And still more reading

Relic of the days of coach travel
Milestone on the old road between Salisbury and Marlborough, now only a track
There's a fair bit of coach travel in Sense and Sensibility

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
About the Movers and Shakers of the French Revolution and how the movement began to destroy itself.  A huge book, meticulously researched and then developed into a detailed fictional account.  It is an extraordinary work of the imagination.   A challenging read, but worthwhile.  Hilary Mantel went on to write her masterpiece, Wolf Hall.

The Garden Cottage Diaries - My Year in the Eighteenth Century by Fiona J Houston published 2009
An account of the author's undertaking to live for a year as a Scotswoman would have lived at the end of the eighteenth century in a small cottage.  There are some lovely photos and interesting recipes.  What is striking is how much effort was involved in achieving even the basic necessities of life.  Fiona Houston appears to have been a very hardy and resourceful person.  I don't think I could have withstood the cold and damp and even she admits to being worn down by it.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
I enjoyed this so much.  Got very annoyed with Marianne for her self indulgence, but remembered that really, she's only a teenager.  Couldn't really believe that Elinor would begin to forgive the dreadful Willoughby, who however good looking was simply a cad to lead poor Marianne on like that and would be a cad in any century.  As for the Steele sisters - we've all met 'em.  And kept remembering Alan Rickman in the Emma Thompson film adaptation playing Colonel Brandon, dressed in country clothes walking alone and morose along a pontoon on the river in dappling sunlight with a fishing rod and followed by his dog.  Sexiest thing I ever saw.