In the Land of the Cymry, which is how Lands and Peoples described Wales, ancient dames wearing chimney-pot hats stopped outside their whitewashed cottages to pass the time of day with more modern, marcel-waved neighbours, and cloth-capped salmon fishers paddled their coracles on the River Dee.

      In Bonnie Scotland, brawny, kilted athletes tossed the caber, border shepherds carried weakling lambs to shelter from the winter snows, women ground corn with stone hand-mills in the Inner Hebrides and, far out in the Atlantic, on St Kilda, the loneliest of the inhabited British Isles, men wearing tam-o’shanters and bushy beards were photographed returning homewards with seabirds taken on its fearsome cliffs.

      In the Emerald Isle, bare-footed, flannel-petticoated colleens drew water from brawling streams, or knitted socks in cabins in Connemara, while little boys in the Aran Islands wore skirts to protect them from being kidnapped by the fairies.

      Further afield, as I turned the pages, covering them with Bovril (for one of my greatest pleasures was to go to bed early with Lands and Peoples and at the same time eat Bovril sandwiches), I came upon Czechs and Slovaks and Hungarians wearing embroidered petticoats irrespective of sex, and incredible hats – in Rumania there were men who wore garters with little bells on them, who looked like sissies to me. I also saw fellers of proud giants in the Canadian forest; savages of New Guinea – their hair plastered with grease and mud; Jews in Poland – a new state with a glorious past; sun-loving Negroes in South Africa; happy Negro children romping in the ‘Coloured Section’ of New York; Kirghiz tribesmen on the ‘Roof of the World’; Orthodox scholars wearing arm thongs and phylacteries studying the ancient laws of their people; penguin rookeries in the Great White South; geishas negotiating stepping stones in Cherry Blossom Land; hardy Indian women on beds of nails at Benares; laughter-loving girls of the Abruzzi; Flemings and Walloons – little Belgium’s two sturdy races; Macedonian women weaving fine cloth with deft fingers; haughty-looking redskins decked in eagle’s feathers and wampum; Germany – rich country of an industrious nation; and so on, and so on.