Category Archives: Travel Guides
Copsford
Walter Murray was a young man tired of living in the city. Early in the 1920s, he persuaded a Sussex farmer to rent him a derelict cottage, which stood alone on a hill, with no running water or electricity. Most of the windows were broken, it was dirty, dark and ran with rats. He bought
Fresh Woods, Pastures New
During an outbreak of meningitis in Glasgow in the 1920s Ian Niall was sent to live with his grandparents, then tenants of North Clutag Farm, Galloway, in south-west Scotland. It was another world compared to the industrial suburbs where he was born. The
The Pattern Under the Plough
In 1948, shortly after settling with his family in the village of Blaxhall, Suffolk, George Ewart Evans started recording the conversations he had with neighbours, many of whom were born in the nineteenth century and had worked on farms before the arrival of mechanisation. He soon realised that below the surface of their stories were
The Mirror of the Sea
When Joseph Conrad was discharged from the clipper Torrens in London during the summer of 1893, his seafaring career was over. He had travelled the world by then, risen in rank from apprentice to captain, survived shipwreck and turbulent seas. But after nineteen years afloat he longed for the land, and wrote to his cousin
Earth Memories
In 1931, after two decades of wandering the world, Llewelyn Powys moved into an isolated cliff-top cottage in Dorset, where he embarked on a series of essays embracing what he called `the poetry of life`. In their evocations of land and sea, of childhood and old age, of wildlife, chance meetings and remembered conversations, they
Country Matters
In this book, originally published in 1937, the acclaimed writer and engraver Clare Leighton takes us on a tour of her favourite country subjects, from picking primroses and the local pub, to tramps and the flower show. With her senses perfectly attuned to her part of southern England in the Chiltern hills, Leighton gently explores
Punk London 1977.
Punk. London.1977. Most people blinked and missed it. Many spent a decade trying to catch up. Derek Ridgers stumbled across it by accident, where it was, in the beating filthy heart of the Roxy in middle of a derelict slum called Covent Garden. Stumbling through the moshpits trying to keep hold of a borrowed camera.
The Ash Tree
Ash is one of the commonest trees in the British Isles – there arenearly as many ash trees as there are people. Perhaps this is why wetake them for granted. Poets write of oak, yew, elm, willow, rarely ash.No books have been written about ash trees before. Yet Ash is one of the most productive
Dark Tourism
Wherein lies the beauty of the dark image? What is the attraction of the dark tourist attraction and, moreover, the disposition and practice of the dark tourist away from and upon return home? Dark Tourism: The Beauty in Death is a collection of photographs captured in places associated with death and tragedy around the world,
Love, Madness, Fishing: A Memoir
Dexter Petley grew up in the 1960s and 70s, on the borders of Kent and Sussex. It was a time of eeking out a living mending cars, exterminating pests or hop picking. Boys were taught to fish by their fathers during the weekends, cast after cast plopping into willow-shaded water. While weekdays were spent at
Naturalia: Overgrown Abandoned Places
Naturalia is a curated collection of images showcasing urban ruins reclaimed by nature. Ornate country mansions, luxury modernist designer homes, stone churches, farm holdings, factories, institutions, private homes, train stations, planes, cars, tanks, trains, palatial courtyards, plantation mansions, spaces of work and play, life and death, all in the vivid processes of reclamation. A wide
Wild Life in a Southern County
Richard Jefferies (1848 1887) remains one of the most thoughtful and most lyrical writers on the English countryside. He had aspirations to make a living as a novelist, but it was his short, factually based articles for The Live Stock Journal and other magazines, drawn from a wealth of knowledge of the rural community into
Island Years, Island Farm
Unhappily land-locked in his early adult life, Frank Fraser Darling`s fortunes changed when he began visiting Scotland`s west coast in the 1930s. Surviving treacherous boat journeys, a broken leg, and hell-bent storms, he made temporary homes with his family on some of the remotest Hebridean islands so he could study the habits of grey seals
Through the Woods
H.E. Bates carried a woodland in his imagination. He fell under its spell as a boy growing up in the Midlands, becoming increasingly enchanted each time he stepped below the wooded canopy. Memory magnified its mystery over the years, enriching his stories as he grew successful as a writer. But why did this place become
In the Country
At the end of the 1960s, Kenneth Allsop, a famous television presenter and literary man-about-town, left London and settled amid the sunken lanes, ancient forests and chalk streams of west Dorset. He was at his very happiest here. He thought it the loveliest place on earth, and for three years he devoted a weekly newspaper
The Military Orchid
Jocelyn Brooke`s love affair with wild flowers and home-made fireworks began when he was growing up in Kent. But there was one particular flower, especially rare and beautiful, which became an obsession. Over three decades and through two world wars, in the deserts of Libya and the woodlands of Italy, in the chalk downs of
Sweet Thames Run Softly
In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Robert Gibbings launched his home-made punt on the River Thames and began a slow journey downstream, armed with a sketchpad and a microscope. From the river`s source at the edge of the Cotswold Hills to the bustle of London`s docks, Sweet Thames Run Softly is
Apple Acre
Food rationing, blackouts, and the threat of invasion became part of everyday life in Britain during the Second World War. Yet despite the wartime austerity and growing mood of unease, Adrian Bell and his wife went about their business in Suffolk, happil
The China Tea Book
Steeped in romanticism, `The China Tea Book` focuses on the land where tea was born China. A host of facts and tales associated with this magical infusion that has enjoyed five thousand years of popularity are narrated in a style that brims with culture, charm and good taste. Passionate yet rigorously researched, refined but eminently
World War One
With the centenary of the outbreak of the `The Great War` coming in 2014, World War One, A Very Peculiar History commemorates the events of the time by looking at some of the incredible lengths, no matter how risky or bizarre, people went to to defend their country. From front pigs to hairy beasts, author
