Bill’s friend, Melvyn Bragg, now Lord Bragg, (presenter of the “South Bank Show”), in his Foreword to “Life and Tradition in the Lake District”, writes: “Here you can find out how butter and cheese were made; see examples of spinning galleries and carved oak bread cupboards; a simple rushlight holder will occupy him as devotedly as customs such as Bidden Weddings and Barring Out.... And so it goes on  swill making, brush making, slate quarrying, hunting, cock- fighting, stone breaking, stone walling - everything intrigues him. And, with unflagging enthusiasm he passes his passion on to us.”  See Folk medicine

“I must confess that if - as often happens - Bill and I went out walking and I fell down a precipi­tous drop of 300 or 400 feet the last words I would hear would be ‘that’s a rare example of vol­canic formation you are looking at. Not many people know that’”....
(Melvyn Bragg, 1988).