Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Journeys in literature

Journeys in literature: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

Country walks will never be the same again after an encounter with this eye-opening masterpiece of seeing and imagining
The Seven Sisters cliffs
The Seven Sisters … ‘strung out like a line of washed and pegged sheets’. Photograph: Justin Kase zninez / Alamy/Alamy
If this is an obvious choice for a summer read, I make no apologies. It may inspire you to abandon the beach, if you haven’t already read it. If you are still lying on the sand, perhaps you should read it again.

Walking for me will not be the same again. I will walk along paths, sail on the sea, with added enjoyment, my imagination fired after reading The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. Macfarlane embraces landscapes, and seascapes. He revels in what he sees with his eyes, as well as the history, books and poems they have inspired. (Language and dialects, the origins of words, are themes of his latest book, Landmarks, published earlier this year.)
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