Human beings have been busy dividing and measuring time for thousands of years, sharing the names of days, months or seasons across cultures so that most of the world's population is now bound together by these conventions. But the marks we make in a calendar are more than practical. They can be beautiful and varied, from illuminated Benedictine manuscripts, Norman fonts and Elizabethan calendar houses to farming almanacs, the poetry of John Clare, the paintings of Stanley Spencer and the ephemeral art of Andy Goldsworthy.
In Time and Place, Alexandra Harris explores these different forms of calendar-making, and discovers in them a delicate weave of seasonality and locality that inspires us all to look afresh at our everyday surroundings and discover ways of expressing and celebrating the turning of the year.
All royalties from Time and Place are being donated to Common Ground to support arts and environmental projects that celebrate the seasons in our lives. Time and Place is a beautiful, fully illustrated, perfect gift and will grace any bookshop till point
Alexandra Harris is a renowned and prize-winning writer, critic and cultural historian. Her books include Romantic Moderns, Weatherland, Modernism on Sea and Virginia Woolf.
"Alexandra Harris makes the past visitable and habitable."
– Peter Conrad