Four Men

The Four Men: A Farrago by Hilaire Belloc, 149 pages

This is Belloc's tale, or rather tales within a tale, of a man called Myself and his companions, whom he nicknames Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, and the Poet, as they wander the beloved countryside of their home county of Sussex, which we are assured was "the first place to be created when the world was made" and will be "the last to remain, regal and at ease when all the rest is very miserably perishing on the Day of Judgement by a horrible great rain of fire from Heaven."  The four men (who, needless to say, are all variations on the author) pass their time speaking or, just as often, singing sound nonsense and enchanting sense, including the stories of how St Dunstan led the devil about by the nose and how Mr Justice Honeybubble delivered his famous Opinion at the Cricketers' Arms.