This biography of the novelist and publisher J.L. Carr. is a sympathetic, moving and often very funny portrait of a uniquely civic-minded man whose achievements ranged from half a dozen fascinatingly original novels to publishing some of the smallest and most collectable books ever, to a lifetime's career as a humane and iconoclastic Northamptonshire headmaster - but also, and above all, as an anatomy of Englishness. Carr's interests and passions represented much of the best of England, from the game of cricket to the endangered country church, from an unswerving sympathy for the underdog and the underprivileged to a hatred of bigotry and showmanship.