When Adnams celebrated 650 years of brewing at Southwold in 1995 there had been an unbroken traditional way of life. Adnams country extends beyond the borders of Suffolk, but this book concentrates on this fine county and its history - from Southwold to Sudbury and Lowestoft to Lavenham.

There are profound contrasts within Suffolk: Felixstowe’s huge container port and ferry terminal and its near neighbour Ipswich, the busy county town just a stone’s throw from the villages of the Gipping Valley. The wool towns of the Stour valley, such as Long Melford, are as handsome as they were hundreds of years ago and the coastline, some sixty miles of it, has some of the loneliest places in England, such as Shingle Street, and some of the most picturesque, like the Deben Estuary leading to Woodbridge and to Sutton Hoo - site of the famous burial now in the care of the National Trust.