As the utopian visions of the hippy era receded, electric folk music reflected the loss of idealism in various ways. The opening chapter on Vashti Bunyan gives little hint of the riches to follow; the tracing of folk-rock's trajectory through Thatcher's Britain feels a little dogged. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. Like an elephant in a hot air balloon Rob Young’s gargantuan Observer’s Book of Folk comes wafting towards us on a breeze of critical hot air.

It appears the stars of this fruitful era, according to the author, are The Incredible String Band who embraced the whole mystic country-based lifestyle whilst creating music of amazing diversity and originality. The book covers a great deal of ground, starting with classical composers such as Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holtz, but the bulk of the book covers the Ewan MacColl purist/traditionalist era through to the folk-rock of Fairport Convention, John Martyn, The Incredible String Band, Nick Drake, and a host of lesser lights (Mr.

People with that sort of collector's anal mind-set are not really the kind of people who should bother to read this amazing book. Far from the stark and no doubt rather wholemealy songbook of 1951, these will be versions that draw on the more recent arrangements of the folk-rock era, by the likes of Pentangle, Shirley Collins, etc – illustrating how far folk music in the British Isles has moved since the war. Talking about Fairport Convention’s talented drummer, Dave Mattacks, he doesn’t note just the “funky plod” of his attack.

I’ll be referring to it a lot as I make my way through my now much-expanded list of albums to listen to. But reading Rob Young it’s hard not to feel as if you are being beaten softly with pillows each stuffed with ten thousand feathery folk facts which escape and float about until the air is thick with facts and factlets and facticles making you snort and sneeze as you plough, hack and heave yourself through these 600 pages PLUS notes PLUS timeline PLUS bibliography. This work chronicles her extraordinary life from the tragic accident that left her lame at the age of 14 to the writing of her novel from her death bed.That omission apart, this is a book of serious and scholarly social archaeology, and one that anyone with an interest in the history of British popular music, folk or otherwise, will find both constantly illuminating and consistently surprising.