Ali Smith finds the modern landscape still suggests the other-worldly creatures she used to read about in folk tales. Niall Griffiths laments the clumsy tributes to Dylan Thomas that cover every available surface in Laugharne. Virginia Woolfs Orlando might seem to be standing beside you in the unchanged parkland around Knole. How does Jaspar Ffordes alternative Swindon compare with our comparatively prosaic version? And who would have thought the M40 such a rich seam for Will Self?
Every writer contributing to this amazing tour of literary Britain continues to be inspired by the writers who lived in their region. They find, whether or not the landscape is changed, some common ground with them.
The writers covered include: Van Morrison, Paul Abbott, Alan Garner, Edward Thomas, Mary Butts, Patrick Hamilton, John Burnside, Harold Pinter, Dylan Thomas, Will Self, Julian Barnes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hilaire Belloc, Jaspar Fforde, Keith Waterhouse, John Milton, David Lodge, Giles Smith, Major H.W. 'Bill' Tilman, Thomas Hardy, Hugh Miller, Stuart Murdoch, Charles Dickens, T.S.Eliot, F.W. Lister, George Mackay Brown, William Shakepeare, Virginia Woolf, Rev. W. Awdry and Richard Long.
The contributors include: Ali Smith, Niall Griffiths, Elise Valmorbida, Richard Clayton, Sarah McCartney, Rob Williams, John Mitchinson, Justina Hart, Robert Mighall, Tim Rich, Jonathan Holt, Rishi Dastidar, Will Awdry, Sarah Burnett, Penelope Williams, Jim Davies, Stuart Delves, Jamie Jauncey, Neil Taylor, Roger Horberry, Stephen Brown, Lorelei Mathias, Tom Wilcox, William Easton Laura Forman, John Simmons, Maja Pawinska Sims, Molly Mackey, Peter Kirby, and Richard Medrington.