'As a child I think we lived on rabbit - boiled, roasted or stewed, it was a staple diet for many families ...' Birdlip, Cold Slad, Crickey Hill and the Air Balloon Inn: growing up in a hamlet of only six houses, John Townsend's humble childhood is full of hardships and adventures in the rough Cotswold hills. His youthful talent for uncovering scrap metal is the beginning of a career in antiques - one which will bring its own surprises, including an encounter with a ghost ...

Warm and full of character, this is an invaluable picture of life in rural Gloucestershire in the 1940s, 1950s and beyond