Time and Tide: The Long, Long Life of Landscape

'Really engaging ... the equivalent of a series of refreshing walks outside... personal, gentle yet buzzing with surprising connections and brilliant cross-references, and shot through with tender delights and unexpected revelations' RICHARD HOLMES 'Consistently and continuously compelling . . . an invigoration and a pleasure to read, and reread, and return to' PROFESSOR ALAN RIACH 'Wonderful... Fiona Stafford unpeels layers and layers of Britain's landscape to reveal the stories within. A fascinating compendium of people and places and how they endlessly interact to change each other' PHILIP MARSDEN A village waits at the bottom of a reservoir. A monkey puzzle tree bristles in a suburban garden. A skein of wild geese fly over a rusty rail viaduct. The vast inland sea that awed John Clare has become fields. Chapter by fascinating chapter, alive with literary, local, and her own family history, Fiona Stafford reveals the forces, both natural and human, which transform places. Swooping along coastlines, through forests and across fens, following in the footsteps of Burns and Keats, Celia Fiennes and Charles Dickens, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Noel Coward and Compton Mackenzie, join her, time-travelling deep into the stories of our Isles. From red squirrels to brick vistas, from botanical gardens to hot springs, the landscapes of Britain are full of delights and surprises. Chance discoveries of rare species, shipwrecks and unlikely ruins, curious trees and startling towers, weird caves and disused airfields, or even just baffling placenames offer ways into unexpected histories and hidden lives. The clues to the past are all round us - Time and Tide will help you find them.