2024/110: A Land — Jacquetta Hawkes

2024/110: A Land — Jacquetta Hawkes

The mountains would endure to feed those roots of human nature which are starved in cities and even among cornfields. It was a hunger that began to be felt in the eighteenth century when Englishmen had won their battle against too much darkness and began to be conscious of too much light. By the end of the Palaeozoic era the possibility of Wordsworth was assured. [p. 62]

This post-war classic, published in 1951, is an account of the geology, archaeology, history and geography of Britain: 'the image I have sought to evoke is of an entity, the land of Britain, in which past and present, nature, man and art appear all in one piece'. ( Read more... )