The Moor: Lives Landscape Literature - Hardcover

Atkins, William

3.6

197 ratings by Goodreads

9780571290048: The Moor: Lives Landscape Literature

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571290043 ISBN 13: 9780571290048

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2014

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In this deeply personal journey across our nation's most forbidding and most mysterious terrain, William Atkins takes the reader from south to north, in search of the heart of this elusive landscape. His account is both travelogue and natural history, and an exploration of moorland's uniquely captivating position in our literature, history and psyche.

Atkins may be a solitary wanderer across these vast expanses, but his journey is full of encounters, busy with the voices of the moors, past and present: murderers and monks, smugglers and priests, gamekeepers and ramblers, miners and poets, developers and environmentalists. As he travels, he shows us that the fierce landscapes we associate with Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles are far from being untouched wildernesses. Daunting and defiant, the moors echo with tales of a country and the people who live in it - a mighty, age-old landscape standing steadfast against the passage of time.

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Review:

A remarkable book. (John Carey Sunday Times)

An ambitious mix of history, topography, literary criticism and nature writing, in the tradition of WG Sebald, Robert MacFarlane and Olivia Laing . . . One of the strengths of Atkins's book is its resistance to the obvious. (Blake Morrison Guardian Book of the Week)

'This is a wonderful, teeming book, and those stoutly poetic souls who favour moorland over lush valleys, rolling dales and even snow-capped fells will cherish it, and consider it quite the classic.' (Rachel Cooke Observer)

'A rich and nuanced read ... an exquisite piece of topographical writing; beautifully observed and evoking a powerful, poignant sense of place.' (BBC Countryfile Magazine)

Not since Tim Binding's haunting On Ilkley Moor (2001) has a writer evoked the uncanny spirit of the moors so powerfully. Vivid with incident and exquisite description. (Philip Hoare New Statesman)

(Atkins') reflections on the ecology, legends and literature are as poetic as shrewd; they fill the empty places with subtle colour, high romance and natural history. (Iain Finlayson The Times)

The Moor is deeply enjoyable, a book worth reading and re-reading, sun or shower, indoors or out. (Spectator)

In William Atkins the moors have found their voice. Beautifully and darkly, with great learning and exquisite observation, the odd wet backbone of England from Cornwall to the Borders is made new. Never have these apparently empty places been revealed as so operative on our national psyche. His is a marvellously saturated book. (Tim Dee)

The non-fiction book of the year: an astonishing, beautiful and remarkable work of muddy brilliance. (Stuart Evers)

This is a book that is like the most perfect kind of walk. William Atkins takes us on a tour through the moorland scenery of Britain, and reveals it to be both stranger and more familiar than I had ever imagined it to be. He is a guide as familiar with nineteenth-century eccentrics as he is with the breeding habits of grouse, and as comfortable with poachers as with poets. Beautiful and memorable. (Tom Holland)

Book Description:

The Moor: Lives Landscape Literature by William Atkins gives us the story of the moors - from Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor and Exmoor in the southwest up to the Scottish border, via Yorkshire and Northumberland - and how they have shaped our people, culture and industry.

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