It is about four years since I first had the good fortune to receive a letter from Harold Bravery. I re­member it well. A thin morning, it was.

In case you do not know what a thin morning is, let me explain. In the life of a newspaper columnist there are two sorts of morning.

There is the morning upon which ideas whizz and dodge round the brainbox like traffic around Piccadilly Circus; all telephones in sight (a columnist's office is like a bookmaker's - all telephones and ashtrays) are ringing at once, with chaps at the other end of the line eagerly describing useful stories; the mail is crammed with pungent, controversial stuff; and the whole prob­lem facing the chap at the typewriter is what to use from this embarras de richesse for his column, and what to cast aside.

Then there is the other type of morning: all tele­phones are silent; the brain is churning like one of those old-fashioned toffee-making machines; not an idea in sight; a space in the paper to fill - and nothing to write about: a thin morning.

It was on such a morning that, in the sparse pile of mail, sandwiched between a chain-letter and a request for a loan of £4 10s., I unhopefully read a typewritten note signed 'H. E. Bravery*.

About wines, it was. Home-made wines. With the automatic, fatalistic reaction of the journalist who finds himself with barely time to write the required number of words before the last moment at which his copy must be ready for type-setting, I began tapping out a column about home-made wines. All Bravery's own work.

I sent a copy-boy up with the manuscript. Then I stuck my hat on and went out for a nourishing half-pint, gloomily reflecting that this was not one of Whitcomb's masterpieces that had just escaped from the typewriter. However, I figured sadly, the readers - generous, kind-hearted lot - would perhaps forgive me for this one. They would understand. In time they might even forget.

Little did I know that I had pressed the button that ignites the main fuse to one of the country's most popu­lar hobbies.

Little did I realise that, the following morning, readers all over the place would be thumping their breakfast tables with a beaming smile and calling to their wives: 'Hey - Mabel - cut this bit out of the paper. At last old Whitcomb has hit on a matter of interest.'

My mail next morning was considerable. If I remem­ber rightly (and don't let me kid you -I do remember rightly) there were 20,000 letters. Next day there were 10,000 more. I could hardly have unleashed more passion if I had attacked the Irish.

Everybody wanted to make this splendid wine for a bob a bottle.

They wanted more recipes. So I got them - from Bravery.

Then came the problems. One man complained he had a hole in the ceiling above where his wine bottles had been. 'Don't cork them tightly so soon next time,' I advised him. After I had asked Bravery, of course.

Soon after that, the best mail of all started pouring in. Letters of appreciation from folk who said that, for the first time, their home-made wine was really first-rate.

So many of them were thanking me that, in October 1955, I printed the following under the heading 'Mr. Bravery Deserves a Medal*.

Come Christmas I shall be drinking a toast to Mr Bravery. And so I should.

For there is a bookcase in my office that used to contain books - but now it's stacked like an off-license with home­made wines from H. E. Bravery.

He's an extraordinary chap, this Bravery. In the home­made guzzling circles of this country, he has done me a bit of good.

You may often hear people say: 'If it is a matter of what is going to win the Cambridgeshire, I would not lean heavily on Whitcomb's opinion. But in the matter of home­made wines - Whitcomb's a winner!'

All because of Bravery. He certainly knows his elder­berries. Not a step do I take in advising chaps who have a hole in the dining-room ceiling through corking their bottles too tightly - without consulting H.E.B.

Thousands of people have written to thank me for the smashing drop of Christmas cheer they have made -for a bob a bottle -from my recipes. All recipes from Bravery.

Yet I’ve never met him. I don't even know what his initials stand for.

I know now. I have just met him for the first time. Yet more than 100,000 Daily Mirror readers have already used either his recipes or his know-how, ac­cording to the letters I have received—and goodness knows how many more who have not written.

In this book he has collected the knowledge gained from his own experience together with a valuable cross-section of all the snags that beginners are likely to come up against, and how to avoid them.

Now that I know a fair bit about it myself, I would say that you couldn't find a better book on the sub½ect.

He knows his stuff, does Harold Bravery - and what a good drop of stuff it is!

Good health!

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