A Sense of Place

Writing about rural landscape is back in fashion. Ronald Blythe’s classic: Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village, was a forerunner, both celebratory and elegiac. His recent memoir, At the Yeoman’s House, focuses on his home, Bottengoms Farm, which he first visited as a guest of the painter, John Nash. Robert Macfarlane’s award-winning Mountains of the Mind was a meditation on expeditions to Everest. His current Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, criss-crosses routes of human and natural history from the downs to the Himalayas. They discuss writing about local and wild places with Olivia Laing, author of To the River.