The Romany Rye

Borrow leaves the dingle where Lavengro ended, shoes horses, buys a fine mare, drinks ale with a Hungarian, argues with a postillion, and keeps company with Romany people who are neither picturesque nor grateful. He mastered a dozen languages and tramped across Spain selling Bibles for a missionary society; nobody has ever been quite sure how much of this is autobiography, which is exactly the effect he wanted. Fifty-three plates after Constable, Morland and their contemporaries follow Borrow's roads and stables, from The White Horse to Grace Before Meat, so the tramp's England rides with him.