There must be a moment in many a travellers life when there is a sudden awareness that the unexplored place as deserving of attention as any distant destination is home. This is what happened to Philip Marsden author of books about Ethiopia, Russia and Armenia after he moved, with his family, to a creek-side house in Cornwall. He fell in love with the place. He writes about it with a historians eye and singular sensitivity. At one point, he acknowledges that his ancient farmhouse is bordering on uninhabitable but seems to rejoice at the wisteria thrusting its way through the bedroom window and the unexpected bramble that has invited itself into the sitting room. It is only when his son, Arthur, announces that there is like a big mouse in the hall that he sees the feral has gone too far. Yet, at the same time, he struggles with an unease about the overhaul the house is about to receive at his hands. He wonders what the people who built it would feel about our planned ceiling lights. Happily, he does not listen to his doubts. Houses, after all like languages change. And besides one cannot help but speculate the people who built the house might have loved the electricity and thoroughly have approved of the ceiling lights.
In a wider context, Marsdens respect for the past is the books great strength. The book is, above all, a tribute to Cornwall and its enduring beauty. It is, in part, a tour of tors and a reminder that stonescapes outlive literary wayfarers. Marsden heads westward towards Lands End, taking in Bodmin, Tintagel and the strange white landscape of china-clay country. His book has an affinity with the work of Jonathan Raban, Richard Mabey and Simon Armitage each writer able, in his different way, to take on landscape as close work. And there is no self-serving romanticism here. Marsden writes in an elegant, retiring way (he could actually get away with keeping himself on a slightly looser rein and include more personal detail). HBut that is not his way: he is more likely to introduce someone else warmly than to show his own hand or heart.
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