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A Book of Old Ballads is a collection of poems written by Beverley Nichols, an English author, playwright, journalist, composer, and public speaker.

These poems are the very essence of the British spirit. They are, to literature, what the bloom of the heather is to the Scot, and the smell of the sea to the Englishman. All that is beautiful in the old word "patriotism" ... a word which, of late, has been twisted to such ignoble purposes ... is latent in these gay and full-blooded measures.