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Read an ebook sample of this earlier in the week, then found a secondhand copy of the hardback so I could read the rest.

Skiffle, that oddly British post-war bridge to rock and roll and pop, tends to get short shrift in musical discussions, probably because so many of the major stars of the sixties who started out in youthful skiffle groups saw it as suddenly desperately uncool and were keen to distance themselves from the scene. The sample, a surprisingly generous one offering several chapters, made it clear that Bragg wasn't going to treat it as an embarrassment or a novelty, tracing its origins from early New Orleans jazz and the British teens who became obsessed with that, up through the spread of live jug-style bands at a time when the average British kid was hard pressed to afford a proper musical instrument; and of course, without skiffle there wouldn't have been The Beatles.

"You can’t be Elvis if you’re British, but you can be Lonnie Donegan" – Van Morrison