In 1989, Tim Moore moved into the last house in Chiswick with an outside toilet. Intrigued by a subsequent encounter with an elderly former resident, he finds himself inspired to travel back to the land before now, experiencing the hardships and homespun pleasures enjoyed and endured by Moores gone by.

The journey that follows takes him through the world of historical re-enactment, sitting at the feet of retromaniacs who have seen their future in the past, and learning their singular ways. Living on bramble leaves, Johnny cake and porridge, Moore travels from the Iron Age to the Steam Age, from Roman legionary, Tudor master to Yankee spy, sharing straw beds and daft hats with period obsessives driven by socio-historical curiosity, disillusionment with the pampered fecklessness of the modern world, or a simple nostalgia for campfires, flatulence and brutality.

I Believe in Yesterday is an odyssey through 2,000 years of filth and fury, where men were men, the nights were black, the world was your outside toilet and everything tasted faintly of leeks.