The unique beauty of the British countryside has been celebrated down the ages through music, poetry, and art. It has also been celebrated in countless private diaries. This delightful treasury gathers together the very finest - from Rev Gilbert White's journal of life at his famous home in Selborne, to Beatrix Potter's holiday diaries from Perthshire. Elsewhere, the thoughts of Dorothy Wordsworth and John Fowles rub shoulders with the words of Alan Clark and Queen Victoria. Together these private records paint a rich and surprising picture of a landscape and a way of life we think we know so well.
Alan Taylor is a journalist who has worked for the Herald, Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. He is currently the editor of the Scottish Review of Books. In an earlier incarnation he was a reference librarian. He is a regular contributor to a variety of publications and is half of the Scottish team on Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz.
'This is an altogether life-enhancing compendium ... It reminds us how the countryside is rapidly chanding, and how, today, one person's fallow field is another's luxury development or power station.' Daily Mail