Are people today greatly different from those of fifty or a hundred years ago? asks the author of Villagers. These eighteen short stories are set in the England of the 1880s to the 1950s, in a fictional community that has its own trade rivalries, committee-room struggles, romantic attachments, follies and forlorn hopes, delights and dark secrets. Many of these tales from our rural past are based on fact - on the author`s own family experiences - and many have the beat of Britain`s industrial heart in the background. Near the village are canals, coal barges, mills, the tentacles of industry and the hum of the local city. Indeed, the last story, `Something Very Special`, with its clang of trams and vivid portrayal of back-to-back housing, has distinct notes of D H Lawrence - but more charm than he tends to offer. Two other tales stand out: a good-humoured account of a teenage girl looking for adventure and finding it, in the form of a Frenchman in a smart car; and the sharply observed chronicle of the exploitation of poor Ellen`s talents and handicaps by her businesslike sister, Ann. Do people still `use` each other in this way - albeit unwittingly? Have we really changed that much? Reading Villagers will tell you otherwise.