And So to Bath

[1] Roberts lived in Oxfordshire and was familiar with the Old Bath Road as far as Maidenhead at which point he would turn off.

After meeting the apocryphal Austrian Rudolph, Roberts has a revelation that there is an untold story of the old coaching route.

Rudolph visits Roberts in London wishing to see the house of Samuel Richardson in Hammersmith.

He takes three months for the journey (instead of the three hours it can be motored in) and gives potted histories of the people and places en route.

These include people such as Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count D'Orsay and Sir William Herschel, and places including Kensington, Brentford, Slough, Newbury and Calne.