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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane – digested read
John Crace reduces the latest peregrinations from the landscape writer to a panoramic 600 words
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
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
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
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
Landscape and literature podcast: Alice Oswald on the Dart river
Alice Oswald on the Devonshire landscape: 'There's a terror in beauty'
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
About 23 results for Landscape and literature