Showing results by author "Christopher Somerville" in All Categories

Travelling a thousand miles and across three billion years, Christopher Somerville (walking correspondent of The Times and author of Coast, The January Man and Ships of Heaven) sets out to interrogate the land beneath our feet, and how it has affected every aspect of human history from farming to house construction, the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis. In his thousand-mile journey, Somerville follows the story of Britain's unique geology, travelling from the three-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, to the furthest corner of Essex.

In January 2006, a month or two after my father died, I thought I saw him again - a momentary impression of an old man, a little stooped, setting off for a walk in his characteristic fawn corduroys and shabby quilted jacket. After teenage rifts it was walking that brought us closer as father and son, and this ghost of Dad has been walking at my elbow since his death, as I have ruminated on his great love of walking, his prodigious need to do it - and how and why I walk myself.

In this powerful and moving narrative, Christopher Somerville skilfully links personal testimonies to present an epic which embraces comedy and tragedy, pride and degradation, close comradeship and stark racial prejudice, devotion to the benign Mother Country and a burning desire to see the back of her. Many of the veterans had never previously talked of their experiences, even to close loved ones.