Despite being one of Bath’s most famous residents Jane Austen may seem an unlikely inclusion in this series but thanks to Kerri Andrew’s recent anthology of women’s writing about walking we have these 2 brief excerpts from her letters about walks in and around Bath in May 1801 (as well as extracts from two of her novels). After all she would not have used a carriage all the time and there were no electric scooters.
Read MoreTwo months ago I had never heard of this book originally published in 1933 and I would like to acknowledge James Owen’s fine review of it in The Times after its recent publication in a new paperback edition at the end of September, upon which much of the following is based.
Read MoreThe poetry of the Second World War was quite different from that of the First, reflecting radical differences between the two conflicts. One of the most famous poems from WW2 was by Henry Reed(not to be confused with his contemporary, the poet and critic, Henry Read),and often read on the radio, is called ‘Naming of Parts’; usually in a very solemn tone as if the words of an army NCO in how a basic army rifle works had some powerful metaphysical meaning.
Read MoreWhen this book was first published in 2014 in France it became a surprise best seller. It’s an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom walking was central to their work -Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau….., and being mainly pre-20th century no women are mentioned although as this series has shown that has changed in more recent years.
Read MoreWhen this book was published in 2010 it received a chorus of enthusiastic reviews. In the Sunday Times it was described as a ‘sparkling biography of the Ordnance Survey and the people who made Britain a cartographic leader.’
Read MoreMelissa Harrison has been writing a monthly Nature Notebook column in The Times since 2014-this collection of her pieces takes her from South London to Suffolk where she now lives; although she makes regular visits to London.
Read MoreThis book is similar to the previous one inasmuch as both are based upon the writings of well-known writers, Dickens and Pepys, which described walks they had made around London in their lifetimes - in Dickens’s case from his writings as a journalist before he started writing novels; in Pepys case from extracts in his diary.
Read MoreThe photo shows St. James Church, Cooling in Kent, where Dickens used to come as a child with his family who lived in nearby Higham. Cooling is about 5 miles from Rochester and close to the north Kent marshes. Dickens later used this spot for the opening scene in ‘ Great Expectations’ and the nearby Thames estuary for the final scene in the novel.
Read MoreThe photo here shows Werner Herzog, the well-known German film director, with Lotte Eisner, the leading German film critic during the Weimar period in Germany in the years after the First World War. Herzog has produced, written and directed more than fifty feature and documentary films during his career, published more than a dozen books and directed as many operas.
Read MoreIn addition to Mike Pitts’ recent book on the construction of Stonehenge it is important to acknowledge an academic paper published in Mercian Geologist 2021 20 (2) with the title ‘The Sarsens of the West Woods , Marlborough Downs and Stonehenge’ which is a vital source for the book and written by Peter Worsley of Reading University with the advice and help of many others.
Read MoreAs Rebecca Solnit, one of the few female writers on the subject of walking, and already discussed in this series for the BRC website, says: ‘Throughout the history of walking…the principal figures had been men.’
In her book Windswept, Annabel Abbs sets out to search for other women, well-known for other reasons but not for their enthusiasm as walkers and in their cases not just local walks but serious excursions to remote and sometimes mountainous rural locations, often alone.
Read MoreThe most recent Penguin edition of ‘Arabian Sands’ has an excellent introduction by Rory Stewart, himself a formidable walker.
Read MoreIf W. H Auden’s poem ‘Walks’ is, and probably always will be, the most succinct addition to this series on literature related to walks and walking(by the way I should add here that Auden wrote the libretto for Glyndebourne’s ‘The Rake’s Progress’, the composer being Stravinsky and the set designer, David Hockney), then Rebecca Solnit’s book on walking(reissued recently in paperback), relishes the nearly encyclopaedic task she sets for herself.
Read MoreI am not going to attempt to comment on W. H. Auden’s myself but am relying on John Fuller in his introduction to his short selection of Auden’s poems, one for every year, and the introduction to him in The Poetry Archive, which I assume is by Andrew Motion, the driving force behind the creation of this online treasure-trove during his time as Poet Laureate.
Read MoreThis book is similar to an earlier one in this series, Anne Wroe’s ‘Six Facets of Light’ but is somewhat broader in scope. But in both cases many, but not all, of the artists and writers they discuss, walked in the countryside and in doing so their ‘their imaginative responses to our landscape’ in both art and literature, began to form.
Read MoreDuring the winter of 1705, the young Johann Sebastian Bach,then unknown as a composer and earning a modest living as a teacher and organist , set off on a long walk from Arnstadt to Lubeck, a distance of more than 250 miles.
Read MoreOver three hundred years ago the great Japanese poet Matsuo Basho set out on an 800 mile hike to Japan’s wild northern provinces. His destination was the Sacred Mountains, where the cave-dwelling Buddhist hermits , or yamabushi, performed their mystic rites. His account of his adventures, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is now a classic, read in every Japanese school.
Read MoreWe start in the snow. Lawrence is walking south through the Tyrol into Italy. It is September 1912. Around him, the mountains are drifts and peaks of white. But here and there beside the path are crucifixes with wooden Christs hung on them, objects of veneration to the local peasants.
Read MoreThis is a wonderful and difficult book; more, as John Carey said in his review, ‘almost not a book at all, more a window into another mind.’ It records Ann Wroe’s thoughts and jottings during walks on the South Downs.
Read MoreIn November 1912 Hardy’s first wife, Emma, died; they had been married for 38 years. By the end of 1912 Hardy had realised that, to recall Emma with the warmth he desperately wanted, he would have to revisit the scenes where they had been happiest, in Cornwall, where she had grown up and they had met.
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