Nearly 50 years ago, a rediscovered diary enchanted the nation. Edith Holden’s Nature Notes for 1906 – published in 1977 as The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady – captured the artist and schoolteacher’s observations on the English countryside’s changing seasons, accompanied by exquisite illustrations of its flora and fauna.

My friend Richard Webb, who has died aged 81, was the man who saw the potential of a dusty manuscript and turned it into a global bestseller. He had been shown the illustrated diary in 1976 by Holden’s 22-year-old great-niece Rowena, then a student at Exeter Art College, whom he had met at a party, and he brought the book out the following year. “Country Diary chimed perfectly with those times – it was rural nostalgia with a safe, beautiful look people wanted after the 1970s recession,” Richard later told an interviewer.