I was honoured to be able to write a foreword for this magnificent book from Wyrd Harvest Press...
It captures the beautiful spirit of both the real and an imagined North. Phil Breach and Tim Turnbull have created a fascinating work that skips adventurously along the border between myth and history, daring, at times, to tread into the mist and fog.
To give a little bit of a flavour of what you might expect I am publishing an extract from the foreword below...
"The North calls me.
The idea of North pulls at my hand like an insistent lover.
Our colonial ancestors ingrained in us the idea that the compass leads to very different destinations. The South was a place of heat, savagery and pirate treasure, the East a place of mystery, strange beliefs and tea, the West was where the civilised made their home and the cold North was a place of legend and myth.
I am from the South. I was born in Shaftesbury in Dorset and have remained in the Southlands of the country ever since. My family lived in Saltburn-by-the Sea but moved to the South a few years before I was born. My aged father, in his reminiscences, recalls my presence there, but it was only my unborn self he sees, the suggested spirit of my own foetus drifting over the Yorkshire hills and down to the sea."
To purchase the book click here or on the picture above. All profits from the sale of the book go to Wildlife Trust charities.