“Marsden is a born writer. Elegance seems as natural to his prose as the breeze from the west to his adopted homeland. He wears his learning lightly, and his curiosity is boundless”
Why do we react so strongly to certain places? Why do layers of mythology build up around particular features in the landscape? When Philip Marsden moved to a remote creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land's End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe.
From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions of Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay country to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of our shifting attitudes to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other 'topophiles' before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his own travels overseas, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.
Shortlisted for Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year
and for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize,
Winner of Holyer an Gof Book Awards – Non-fiction Category, The Waterstones Award and The Cornish Literary Guild Salver
“Fascinating and hauntingly evocative... Philip Marsden has written a truly wonderful and enjoyable book.”
“Equally entertaining and enlightening... Marsden’s references are glittering. This is a timely volume, describing in beautiful prose the opulence of our natural and human fabric. Guaranteed to fill the windows of Cornish bookshops, it is a superb and educative work which should be read everywhere.”
“With an astonishingly keen eye for detail and a beguiling gift for the description of landscape... This is an extraordinary, complex and fascinating book. It is not just about Cornwall; it is also about the human endeavour to make meaning of life.”
