Country Living Guide to Rural England: The Heart of England by David Gerrard (Travel Publishing, £9.99)

HERE'S the kind of guide book you want to keep handy in the car when you are travelling, or bung in a rucksack when out walking in the countryside.

It's one of a new series of 10 guides published in conjunction with the magazine and is SW11's idea of what it's like to live in the sticks.

There are lots of pictures, lots of maps - each with a suggested walk - lots of jolly interesting info-bites to top up the interest levels while journeying through that swathe of England that begins in Herefordshire (how refreshing to see that someone south of Watford actually recognises the county is no longer tied to Worcestershire) and ends where Lincolnshire runs out of land and totters into the North Sea.

A quotation from Pevsner kicks-off this 40-pager - never a good start in my book (I'm very definitely a John Harris man) - and from then on, its information overload on where to go, what to see, where to eat, where to buy... except...

Except... it very quickly dawns that what is recommended is mostly because the particular B&B, farm shop, museum, gallery, whatever, has paid good money in exchange for a mention.

They are advertisers, so it doesn't appear that anything listed is included solely on merit.

For instance, anyone in the vicinity of the sleepy village of Sellack, near Ross-on-Wye and desperate for a decent bite to eat, isn't told of Stephen Bull's fabulous Lough Pool Inn.

And the research isn't all that hot either.

The guide lists Clifton upon Teme simply as Clifton and describes the downfall of Witley Court as "destroyed by fire in 1937". Err. No.

There is no doubt that the blaze did enormous damage to the building but it was the elements and the official vandalism that are the main reasons for the sorry ruin that it is today.

Nit-picking? Maybe... but getting basic information wrong never bodes well.

David Chapman