Somerset by Sylvia Townsend Warner - 2007 - hardback - 136 pages - 188x243mm
>- 64 black & white plates - price £17.99 - ISBN 978-0-9549286-4-3

Sylvia Townsend Warner was already an established novelist and poet when she agreed to write Somerset in 1949. The result is a witty and erudite companion; ‘a sensualist’s book, written in a style which conveys the intimate quality of conversation.’ The reader is taken on a journey through the county’s most beautiful scenery – ‘One cannot travel through Somerset without feeling that one is be-ing handed on from one set of hill to another.’ Exmoor, Quantocks, Poldens or Mendips, they each have their own distinct character.

Bath and Wells and the great Ham stone houses are among the highlights but Warner is just as good on Somerset churches, its barns and cottages and the craftsmen who built them. She has a particular affinity for the willowy landscape of Sedgemoor and Glastonbury’s legendary Tor and is equally at home with the Romantic poets on the Quantocks. But as she admits, ‘Since I am constitu-tionally incapable of resembling a guide, an err-and-stray-book would be nearer my measure.’ She lingers in country lanes, muses on the natural world and is always alive to the sounds smells and col-ours of the countryside. Her Somerset is packed with fascinating information and delightful digres-sions.