Divine Landscapes

by Ronald Blythe

Divine Landscapes is an illustrated guide to some of the places where mystics, poets and saintly writers lived and worked, drawing on their local surroundings to find metaphors and images for the sublime and inexpressible. Among many places, we discover John Donne's London, George Herbert's riverside haunts in Chelsea, Cambridge and Salisbury, John Bunyon's Celestial City in Bedford, Langland's Shropshire and Malvern Hills, Julian's Norwich,Columba's Iona, Cuthbert's Holy Island and other sites hallowed by Celtic poet saints. It is illustrated with Edwin Smith's timeless black and white images.

Genres: Nature, Travel

Paperback

First published March 13, 1986

About the author

Ronald Blythe CBE was one of the UK's greatest living writers. His work, which won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th-Century Classic and a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: A Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006. In 2017, he was appointed CBE for services to literature

Reviews

[Karen Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronald Blythe takes us on a tour of the landscapes that influenced some of Britain's most famous religious and most famous writers, from Saints Cedd and Aidan, Julian of Norwich, William Langland, the martyrs of the Tudor and Stewart reigns, and on through Thomas Hardy and Arnold Bennett. He visits the places where they lived and died and shows the influences of these locales on how they conducted their lives, and on what they thought and said and wrote. The book is full of the beautiful black and white photos of Edwin Smith, but it is Blythe's prose that brings these scenes and people to life. Beautifully and wonderfully written.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very personal take on the history of the church in England as seen through a combination of English landscape and English literature. I am very impressed by the depth of Blythe’s knowledge and understanding of our literature and the places associated with it. Beautifully illustrated. I now know more about the martyrs of the reformation than I care for!