NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I was introduced to Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby by fellow birder Mark Hollingworth, who sold it to me as 'the ultimate love story'. It tells the tale of the author's experiences during the Second World War, beginning with his arrest while participating in an action with the Special Boat Service off of the Italian coast. With the subsequent Armistice between the Allies and Italy, he is released, but needs to evade the marauding German forces at the same time as nursing a broken ankle. His injury slows down his colleagues escape, so he is abandoned in a farmer's barn, from where an Italian doctor takes him to a hospital. Here he meets a young woman who visits the patients in the hospital - she teaches him Italian, he teaches her English - and they fall in love. But the Germans are closing in, so he is moved between houses before being finally taken up into the mountains, where he is sheltered by peasant families. Here we are introduced to the bravery of...

I have just finished reading Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways  and it is a book that will long remain with me. The human relationship with the creation and maintenance of pathways is explored, looking through the ages and across the types of land (or sea) affected. The link between walking and thinking is explored. We meet a colourful cast of characters whose lives are woven into the natural world via an intimate understanding of it through the medium of travelling and embracing the landscape around them. The book is also an homage to Edward Thomas, writer and poet who died at the Battle of Arras during the First World War. He lived and wrote about his beloved 'South Country', centred on Hampshire and Kent. Bouts of depression were walked off in the chalky hills and these journeys led to an outpouring of writing prior to, and during, his fateful journey to France. We are also introduced to Eric Ravilious, English water-colourist who, like Thomas, died while on activ...