A cheerful antidote to misery memoires and other currently fashionable chronicles of personal pain, Bagnold Fleecy is an absorbing but light-hearted tale, best read with a glass of wine. The story is set in a colourful version of bygone England in the market town of Bagnold Fleecy where probationary bishop Edwin Cartington is attempting to stay on the right side of his splenetic superior, Aeneas Bowmanford. Edwin's decision to take under his wing a nostrum-seller's assistant encountered at the May Fayre is of itself sufficient to provoke Bowmanford's wrath, but when corset-makers, pochard experts, pirates, nuns and French lawyers are added to the mix, even Edwin's eccentric housekeeper is unable to stave off trouble. The destinies of this unlikely assemblage become increasingly entangled and when, finally, the day of the Bicentennial Festival arrives, a miscellany of Bagnoldian intrigues, plans and aspirations teeter in the balance, resolving unexpectedly as the day unfolds.