Well, for a start, this book is definitely not for the politically correct! Squire Haggard, a fictional 18th Century country squire and diarist is best described as hard-drinking, xenophobic and lecherous, always armed with a fowling-piece and the foe of Whigs, Jacobites, Papists, Frenchmen and Scotchmen! There's casual violence; women are largely treated as the object of sexual conquest or else ridiculed. In fact the diary contains language that is the polar opposite of what we would know today as diversity and inclusion.

If you can put such concerns to one side and switch your level of humour down to 'school or college student', then this book is at times laugh out loud funny. Apart from Sq. Haggard’s exploits, the diary entries remark on the weather; food eaten; death and disease; sexual encounters (which are recorded in bawdy detail) and an obsession with small sums of money. Thus we are introduced to the likes of his wife Tib; his idiot son Roderick; Perverted Polly from Lower Sodmire (Haggard's favourite whore); his servant Grunge and Squire Haggard's nemesis Sir Josh Foulacre along with an endless list of lesser characters whose only mention is to have recorded their manner of death, viz., Ebenezer Cartwright died from the Windy Convulsions; the Rev. Septimus Sneer struck dead whilst composing a Treatise Upon Eternal Life; Jeremiah Barnwood died from the Black Eruptions and so on.

If any of the above appeals to your sense of hour, you will enjoy it.