Andrew Connell uses borough records, the minutes of district and county councils, school log books, and an array of local newspapers and photographs to reconstruct the history of Appleby Fair from its origins to the present. Reputedly among the largest and oldest gatherings of Gypsies and Travellers in Europe, the fair has attracted myth and legend, as well as the attention of the media and tourists. Claims about the fair's origin in a charter from 1685 are exposed as invention. Similarly unsubstantiated are assertions by some families that their ancestors have gathered annually at Appleby for centuries, and that the tradition of Gypsies and Travellers washing their horses in the River Eden has existed since time out of mind. Connell's careful but sympathetic analysis demonstrates that the development of the fair as a horse fair, and its association with Gypsies and Travellers, dates only from the early twentieth century.

Until local government reorganisation in 1974, Appleby was an ancient borough and county town in Westmorland, with a record of fairs from the fourteenth century. Through many mutations as a fair for sheep and cattle, linen and wool, and as a major drovers’ fair in the eighteenth century, Appleby Fair was revitalised by the agricultural and military demand for horses at the end of the Victorian era and the time of the First World War. It then flourished as a social, cultural and commercial gathering for Gypsies and Travellers, survived attempts by authorities to close it down in the 1960s, and continues as an informal but well-publicised festival drawing thousands of campers and many more thousands of visitors.

Connell treads lightly on the disputed ground of Gypsy/Traveller identity, which encompasses self-ascribed Romanies, Irish and Scottish Travellers, other itinerants, and a smattering of recently arrived Roma. He reports perennial assertions that ‘real Gypsies’ are greatly outnumbered, and observes that ‘those who consider themselves Romani tend to keep their own company’ (p. 7). Connell glances at the activities of fair-goers, coursing and display of horses and humans, but his focus is historical and administrative, not anthropological or ethnographic. This book is not the place to examine the lives, views, values, or interactions of those who give Appleby Fair its energy and colour.

Connell's greatest contribution, after exposing the mythology of the fair's imagined origins, is his history of the local government response to the phenomenon in their midst. As a local historian, history teacher, councillor, and mayor of Appleby, he is well attuned to the business of decision making. Without getting bogged down, he threads his way through records of the Appleby Borough and Town Councils, North Westmorland Rural District, and Westmorland County Council, and its successors Eden District and Cumbria, as well as police authorities, liaison committees, and agencies and ministries at Westminster. While administrators wrestle with problems of safety and liability, litter and morality, economic opportunities and animal welfare, Connell shows that Appleby Gypsy Horse Fair has a life of its own.