Full English

Edward Miller has been running a successful B&B enterprise in a peaceful part of the Lake District for over 25 years. Here he tells his story of how it came about and how he learned through trial and error to not only make a decent profit out of it, but to enjoy (nearly) every minute of it. The book is full of incidents, some beyond belief, others rib-tickling or just plain bizarre. But it is also full of practical advice and tips, all of them summarised at the end of each chapter. With cartoons by Robin Grenville Evans.

Ed Miller was born in 1933 into a long line of Ribble estuary shooters and fishers. After his education at King Edward VII School, Lytham, he joined a Lancashire freelance press agency and remained in full-time journalism for eight years. At 26 he bought Entwistle Guns, in Blackpool, a business established in the late Victorian era, and shortly afterwards opened a branch in Preston. Adhering to a long-term plan, he retired to the Lake District before he was 50 to 'play village cricket and do a lot more shooting and fishing'. A serious cycling accident in 1990 threatened to end his active life, but he recovered sufficiently to resume his beloved goose shooting. Now he concentrates on driving his teenage son, Jago, in the early hours of winter mornings, to marshes as far apart as the Ribble, Morecambe Bay and the Solway. All are reachable in little more than an hour from their Cumbrian base. 'The frisson of pre-drawn forays and the sounds, sights and smells of saltings - they stir me as much as they did over 60 years ago.'