Under the Parish Lantern offers an interesting insight into rural life in Worcestershire. In the original foreword Bernard Miles claimed that Fred Archer ‘…doesn’t pretend to be a writer but just a farmer, putting things down in the plainest and most unadorned English, digging into his memory and hauling up great spadesful of practical matter about the village people of his youth…’ Here then is an interesting collection of characters from Fred Archer’s youth, from John Clopton the cobbler to Maud Handy the farmer’s wife who always held a stall at the village fete. This charming collection of memories glows with a magical warmth which revives the England of the First World War and just after. Under the Parish Lantern takes the reader back in time to the days of home farming, horse ploughing and hand milking.