In Glyn Hughes’ ‘Yorkshire Millstone Grit’ there is a photograph of Billy Holt steering Trigger down a beck over broken millstone as the Lone Ranger steered Silver down a gulley between boulders in dusty Nevada. The Lone Ranger, the TV vigilante from the 1950’s, had a different adventure every week, but in damp Todmorden Billy’s memorable adventures (the one’s that made it into print) appeared to occur every decade or so: mill worker, soldier in the First World War, at Hardwick Crags, builder and owner of one of the first holiday camps in the UK, journalist in the Spanish Civil War, Communist council candidate winning a Tory seat, short stay in the cells for protesting with the unemployed workers movement, artist, lone traveller across Canada to Vancouver, horse rider across Europe, publisher of his own books, sold from his saddle bag…

Review of William Holt’s Autobiography: I Haven’t Unpacked