In each walk, a scene. In each journey, a story. To tread any well-travelled path is to step upon layers of history and to add to them. What was seen by yesterday’s rambler? Who were they? What was their Britain?

Peter Fiennes follows in the footsteps of writers, spiritualists, economists, farmers, churchmen and artists, from the eleventh century to the twentieth. Traversing past and present, he searches for signs of what his absent guides once saw and, through their words, opens up a new way of seeing what is there today. Footnotes is full of wonders and wanders, old stories and fresh connections, worn roads and wild places. It is a mesmerising quest to picture these isles anew.

Fiennes’s fellow travellers include Enid Blyton (Isle of Purbeck, Swanage, Weymouth); Wilkie Collins (Cornwall, Plymouth, Land’s End, Looe, St Ives); Ithell Colquhoun (Lamorna Cove); Celia Fiennes (Glastonbury, Wells, Bath, Bristol, Gloucester, Hereford); Gerald of Wales (Hereford, Hay on Wye, Newport, Cardiff, St Davids, Snowdonia); Somerville & Ross (north Wales); JB Priestley & Beryl Bainbridge (Stoke, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, Bradford, Newcastle, York, Hull); Charles Dickens (Lake District, Doncaster, London); Johnson & Boswell (Edinburgh, Skye, Aberdeen).

Peter Fiennes

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