I don't often re-read books but occasionally I revisit well-trodden ways and this book is one to return to. One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes describes the events of a summer's day in 1946, charting the post-war world and the shifts in society as seen through a typical family in a typical English village.

Although it describes a vanishing - and now almost antique - way of life, it is a rhapsodic book, written with a poet's sensibilities, and the eye of a true observing recorder. It's brevity only intensifies its focus so that every word counts. Each page contains a carefully drawn sketch of a world found within an apparently insignificant moment, and its quality never wavers: