“Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

“I, I find all kinds of witchcraft slightly nauseating and this I find absolutely disgusting.”

– Sir James Forbes

– You know, I take pictures, photographs, but I never really thought in black and white before I saw our rushes. Do you know what I mean? You can see the shape of things.   – Life is in colour, but black and white is more realistic.

”'Junket is junket,' I said, and 'no matter what you do with it, it still tastes like swill and swallows like slime.'”

– school cook

“I'll tell you what though, Mac. There'll be no more games from now on.”

– Ansell

“I'll be eating frankfurters and onions. Plenty of tomato ketchup. Chips with lots of vinegar. Few cockles and muscles. Jellied eels, Coca-Cola, beer, the old jukebox, lollipops, all the lot.”

– Pete

“Love! Love!”

– anonymous poet interrupting Harry Fainlight

“My son – Sebastian – and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer.”

– Mrs Vi Venable