Landscape and Memory

The forest primeval, the river of life, the sacred mount — read Landscape and Memory to have these explained...

Landscape and Memory is a history book unlike any other. In a series of journeys through space and time, it examines our relationship with the landscape around us — rivers, mountains, forests — the impact each of them has had on our culture and imaginations, and the way in which we, in turn, have shaped them to answer our needs.

This is not a conventional history book — but a history book that builds up its argument by a series of poetic stories and impressions which cumulatively have the effect of a great novel. The forest primeval, the river of life, the sacred mount — and by the end of this wonderful book, we understand where these ideas have come from, why they are so compelling and how they still lie all around us.

"One of the most intelligent, original, stimulating, self-indulgent, perverse and irresistibly enjoyable books I have ever read." — Philip Ziegler