The Survival of a Village - The History of Allexton By Vivian Anthony 258pp with illustrations Published by the author in 2009 at Bridge House, Allexton LE15 9AB - Price: £16.50 Printed by and available from Peter Spiegl & Co, Stamford (www.speigl.co.uk) ISBN: 0 902544 62 4 - Also available from local bookshops The little village of Allexton on the Rutland/Leicestershire border is largely overlooked, or more often driven past on the busy A47. The author, a former schoolmaster, has spent ten years gathering together various elements of village history and has self published the result. He crosses and re- crosses the divide between popular and more detailed academic study quite well, given the limited appeal to a wider audience of a subject village with only thirty two dwellings. With 200 pages of text, divided chronologically and by subject, and 57 pages of appendices, this is not a light weight read! It lacks a decent map and a wider editorial hand. There are also some basic factual errors – for example the Belton fire was in 1776, not 1774, and the coronation of George VI was in 1937, not 1936. Some of the illustrations are a little too small and perhaps, despite their charm, fewer should have been drawn from forty-year-old school text books. The author tries to bridge the gap between the lords of the manor approach to village history and a more inclusive exploration of the ordinary village folk. With all the appendices, anyone with ancestors in the area may well find an interesting reference to them in this book. Apart from that, it is nice to see a parochial study made available for a general readership, in a volume that bears evidence of the enthusiasm of the author and the enhanced quality of production by the printer. Peter Johnson for Rutland History Society Newsletter