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Landscape and literature

A multi-platform series examining how landscape permeates in to literature of all genres: poetry, fiction and non-fiction
  • Dear Bradford: a love letter to a misunderstood city – documentary

    From Muslim ‘no-go areas’ to Brexit-voting white nationalists, stereotypes continue to be perpetuated about Bradford 21 years after the 'race riots'. Farhaan was born in the city in the 1980s to a family of south Asian Muslim heritage. From a young age he feared being ‘found out’ and lived a dual existence, moving away from Bradford as soon as he could. He spent years travelling the world and teaching English. But, when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Farhaan was reluctantly forced to return to his hometown. Through his beloved grandma, or 'Amma', and the poetry of his late grandfather, Farhaan learned how to love Bradford – and himself. This is an intergenerational account of one family that tells the story of a place, but also of many other diaspora families across the UK and the world

  • The Stone of Goronwy also called Slate of Gronw, or Llech Ronw

    Country diary: landmarks of the Mabinogion

    Ffestiniog, Gwynedd: Thirty years ago, the Llech Ronw lay unheralded by a stream. These days, alas, it is surrounded by wire and concreted into a plinth
  • Entrance to the Hartburn Grotto

    Country diary: the way through the woods leads to a mysterious grotto

    Hartburn, Northumberland Carved into the cliff is a narrow entrance, like a grotesque mask
  • Brooke and Ally arrive on the summit of the Aiguille Verte. Still from Mountain, movie documentary by Jennifer Peedom

    Mountain: a movie that reaches new peaks of cinematography

    Prepare to be taken to dizzying heights as a new documentary explores the physical beauty of the world’s highest places in ‘an exhilarating game of vertical pinball’
  • Lake Buttermere

    Lake District is UK's first national park to win world heritage status

    UK now has 31 world heritage sites as Lakes is listed by Unesco, citing area’s beauty, farming and cultural inspiration
  • Grey wagtails on tree trunk

    Graceful quick-step of the grey wagtail

    Country Diary: Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, Wales They are constantly in motion, dancing out of the gorge in undulating flight
  • Ben Nevis North Face Cloud Snow. Image shot 2007. Exact date unknown.<br>A9047T Ben Nevis North Face Cloud Snow. Image shot 2007. Exact date unknown.

    Simon Ingram and Fiona Reynolds on our natural landscapes – books podcast

    Simon Ingram tackles the forbidding rock face of the mountaineering memoir, while Fiona Reynolds mounts a passionate plea for the defence of our natural landscape
  • A field of ‘greenery-yallery’ grass in May, over the historic town of Bruton, Somerset.

    Poetry in English leaves of grass – archive

    16 May 1936: In May the land is murmurous with the utterance of its own striving to richness
  • Cambridgeshire map showing Adventurers' Land

    Exercises of perception in scallywag land

    Country Diary: Adventurers’ Land, Cambridgeshire Everything is straight, the ploughs, dykes, roads, below a horizon flat as a planed edge
  • Snipe at Venus pool, Cound, Shropshire

    Plashy utopia of the rain inspectors

    Country Diary: Wenlock Edge, Shropshire In the season of snipe, six stand together, winged probes the colour of winter marshes
  • Yew tree, churchyard, Dorset

    Yew sets ancient tone of burial ground

    Country Diary: Shaftesbury, Dorset Beyond the hilltop’s headstones the expanse of the vale brings a sense of magic and special place
  • A Field in England

    The eeriness of the English countryside

    Writers and artists have long been fascinated by the idea of an English eerie - ‘the skull beneath the skin of the countryside’. But for a new generation this has nothing to do with hokey supernaturalism – it’s a cultural and political response to contemporary crises and fears
  • Robert Macfarlane

    Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane – digested read

    John Crace reduces the latest peregrinations from the landscape writer to a panoramic 600 words
  • The Long Mynd, Shropshire

    Dazzling light at the Devil’s Chair

    Country Diary The Long Mynd, Shropshire: On the upland heath the unlocking of leaf and flower buds feels like the crackle of electricity
  • The Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye

    Robert Macfarlane on The Old Ways – books podcast

    Travel writer Robert Macfarlane came to the Guardian book club to discuss his exploration of the ancient tracks that crisscross the globe
  • Danby Beacon, North York Moors, storm approaching

    The Moor: Lives, Landscape, Literature review – a wonderful book about moorlands and more

    The violence, wonder and ghosts of moorland are savoured in this highly engaging account of walks on English moors, writes Rachel Cooke

  • Pendle by Alaistair Lee

    Surprise artwork pops up for witches on Pendle Hill

    Planners and council startled - but 300ft numbers will have gone by tomorrow so everyone seems to be satisfied

  • Blowing in the wind … Dartmoor can be a bleak and uninviting place

    Landscape and literature podcast: Alice Oswald on the Dart river

  • River Dart in Devon

    Alice Oswald on the Devonshire landscape: 'There's a terror in beauty'

  • whitechapel street sign

    Landscape and literature podcast: Rachel Lichtenstein in Whitechapel, London

    Artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein takes Madeleine Bunting to Whitechapel in east London to revisit her own past and consider a place that has changed dramatically since her grandparents arrived there in the 1930s

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