A review of Custard, Culverts and Cake appears in the current Times Literary Supplement, and the reviewer seems to have the measure of us perfectly!
'It may look otherwise, but Custard, Culverts and Cake: Academics on life in “The Archers” is not a spoof. Instead, it involves the application of genuine research methodologies and concerns to the world of Ambridge and Borsetshire, which some people continue to believe is fictional. To underline that that is not the case, here each of these fascinating case studies is “peer reviewed” by an actual Ambridge inhabitant, so real academic protocols are applied throughout.
Ambridge is an outlier and a singularity, as well as a real place. Christine Michael’s essay on “The Ambridge Paradox: Cake consumption and metabolic health in a defined rural population” is a model social-medicine study that exposes a mystery on a par with the negative correlation in France between high blood pressure and coronary thrombosis.'