Robin Blake is a novelist, art critic and acclaimed biographer of Anthony Van Dyck and George Stubbs. Born and brought up in Preston, he has lived for many years in London.
1743, and the tanners of Preston are a pariah community, plying their unwholesome trade beside a stretch of riverside marsh where many Prestonians by ancient…
The year is 1742, and the people of Preston are looking forward to their ancient once-every-twenty-years festival of merriment and excess, the Preston Guild. But…