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In 1643 an English landowner, Sir Ralph Verney, fled to France in the depths of the Civil War. He settled in Blois and, while there, amassed a vast archive that is still unpublished. The letters Verney kept, and his financial accounts, show that almost every member of his family learned the guitar. These records provide a wealth of information about the music they played, the guitars they bought and their reasons for cultivating a light and fashionable instruments far from...