Literary Trails: Writers in their Landscapes

Writing this book satisfied my two favourite occupations: reading and walking – to say nothing of a little sailing. i explored Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Jane Austen’s Hampshire; Bloomsbury-in-Sussex and the lake country landscapes beloved of poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth and novelists like ARthur Ransome and Melvyn Bragg. i discovered the Arthurian locations visited by John Steinbeck when he came to England to retell the tales of Sir Thomas Malory in the places they might really have happened, and decided that my own next book would provide the much-neglected Malory with the life story that he deserved.