GATHERINGS FROM SPAIN Richard Ford 1 873429 34 7 £12.99 354pp 16pp plates pbk with flaps 140 x 215 mm Published in association with Ostara Publishing The splendid result of the toil, travel, genius and learning of one man, and that man an Englishman George Borrow You may live fifty years without turning out any more delightful thing than the Gatherings J. G. Lockhart, writing to Ford Ford transferred to his glowing and accurate pages that vivid appreciation which he so singularly possesses of all that is characteristic of Spain. Spain lives in his book, clad in her peculiar and intimate colouring Lord Carnarvon For many readers, Ford remains the greatest travel writer of all. 'Time has not dimmed the scintillating perspicacity of Ford's observation, nor weakened the verve of his engaging style,' writes Ian Robertson in his preface. As soon as it appeared, Richard Ford's Handbook to Spain was hailed as a major work of literature. How far Ford had burst out of the guidebook genre was amply proved the next year when Murray's produced a compendium of the material they had forced Ford to discard from the Handbook. Characteristically, Ford also added much that was new, all of it treated with energy, diamond wit and irresistible charm. Much of what he describes of the Spanish character remains valid today; much of romantic Spain was already fast disappearing: 'Many a trait of nationality in manners and costume is already effaced; monks are gone, and mantillas are going, alas! going.' This new edition - the first for a generation - of Gatherings from Spain, is illustrated with drawings by Ford himself and his friends, and enriched by a fully annotated index, the fruit of many years' research by Robertson, a leading scholar in the field. Richard Ford, born in 1796, was educated at Winchester and Oxford. He spent a number of years in Spain before being invited by John Murray to write the Handbook to Spain (1845), still accepted as the finest guidebook to Spain ever written. He also contributed to the Quarterly, Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews. After his return from Spain he retired to Heavitree in Devon, where he died in 1858. Ian Robertson, editor of the reprint of the Handbook to Spain, is known for his extensive contribution to the Blue Guide series of guidebooks. He lives in Arles.