Time and Tide: The Long, Long Life of Landscape

'Poetic and profound, Time and Tide is wise, considered and full of surprises' Observer'Poignant and touching' Mail on Sunday'Miraculous' ScotsmanA village waits at the bottom of a reservoir.A monkey puzzle tree bristles in a suburban garden. A skein of wild geese fly over a rusty rail viaduct.The vast inland sea that awed John Clare has become fields. Chapter by fascinating chapter, alive with literary, local, and her own family history, Fiona Stafford reveals the forces, both natural and human, which transform places.Swooping along coastlines, through forests and across fens, following in the footsteps of Burns and Keats, Celia Fiennes and Charles Dickens, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Noel Coward and Compton Mackenzie, join her, time-travelling deep into the stories of our Isles. From red squirrels to brick vistas, from botanical gardens to hot springs, the landscapes of Britain are full of delights and surprises.Chance discoveries of rare species, shipwrecks and unlikely ruins, c