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Now, you may be sitting at home thumbing through your copy of Discover Thanet and thinking what an excellent idea it was to publish a guide to Thanet. And you’d be right.

But if you’re sitting there at home thinking it was the first time anyone had such an idea, well, you’d be wrong. WRONG.

Because a few years ago saw the launch of the Isle of Thanet Compendium – a comprehensive guide to everything there ever has been or ever will be in Thanet. It’s witty, whimsical and entertaining – and well worth a look.

Here’s a couple of sample entries:

Josse Family
The Josse Family owned Josse Farm (later called Elmwood Farm) and the surrounding land in Elizabethan times. They made the gap – Joss Gap – in the cliff so they could collect seaweed to use as fertiliser on the farm.

Katherine Mansfield
T S Eliot, a visitor to Margate, told Ezra Pound that she was a dangerous woman. He also said she had a fascinating personality but was a thick-skinned toady. By 1918 she had contracted tuberculosis which, five years later, killed her.

The first entry is a fascinating piece of local history; the second is, well, tenuous at best. There are a couple of thousand entries like this, ranging from brief to extensive – but all idiosyncratic and all entertaining.

Stockists include Nice Things in Ramsgate. Get your copy today.