Journal of a Somerset Rector 1803-1834
John Skinner
Oxford University Press (1984)
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This volume of diaries is as fresh and moving as the day it was written. John Skinner is the difficult, irascible and priggish rector of a coal-mining town. Life for his parishioners is short, brutish and full of drama; his congregation flocks to the Methodists. His wife dies, his sons turn into mini-Kevins. Oh, the rows, so painful and so funny. The reader grieves for him.