The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape

by Alexandra Harris

This luminous chronicle of lives in an English landscape over time is a feat of time travel from the prize-winning author of Romantic Moderns and Weatherland.An ancient church sheltering a medieval anchorite who chose to be buried alive.The country estate parading a menagerie of exotic animals.The cottage where William Blake channelled received the poetic spirit of Milton.A safe house harbouring secret agents from wartime French resistance networks.When the celebrated critic and cultural historian Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all.As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects, bringing a lifetime's reading to bear on the place where she started, hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area's past. Who has stood here, she asks; what did they see? From the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace, these electrifying encounters - spanning the Downs, Poland, Australia, Canada - inspired her to imagine lives that seemed distant, yet were deeply connected through their shared landscape. By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris finds 'a World in a Grain of Sand' by opening vast new horizons, becoming our intimate companion as we travel on visionary journeys through space and time. The result is a masterpiece of 'scholarship at its life-enhancing best' (Independent) which reveals that nowhere is simply one place :and gives us all new bearings.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Nature, Travel, Natural History

512 pages, Paperback

Published March 13, 2025

About the author

Alexandra Harris is a British writer and academic.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Alexandra Harris’s previous books, Romantic Moderns and Weatherland for their portrayal of artists and writers in particular English landscapes. The Rising Down takes a different approach, simultaneously broader and more focused; broader in that she looks at a wider cast of characters including water bailiffs, rectors, soldiers and tradesmen and women as well as creative types, but more focused in that she concentrates on the small area of West Sussex around Arundel and Chichester in which she grew up. It proves to be fertile ground and Harris is skilled both in using patchy local history sources to ferret out interesting but previously overlooked lives and in telling their stories in creative and engaging ways for the modern reader.

[Catullus2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I grew up in West Sussex and now live thousands of miles away but still feel I have chalk and flint embedded in me! Harris takes the parochial and expands it to illuminate national and global events.

[Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book brings history literally closer to home (if your home is in Sussex). But even if you don’t live in Sussex, this book leaves you with a sense of curiosity. Do you ever think about who else has seen that tree, your woods, walked down your lane, or stepped through your garden gate? That “they feel so close I could run to catch up with them, and they are immensely far away”.

The book starts from the ground and asks who has known it. What they felt about Sussex, what they wrote, painted, sang and carved of it. It’s a history of Sussex through landscape and art. On any unremarkable spot you can run back through time and discover remarkable people and events which took place.

It took me a while to get into it, but I loved the descriptive writing, well suited to the poetry of Sussex through the ages. For example William Blake in Felpham - who had never seen the sea and now “lived a two minute walk from the sight of infinity”.

I wish there was one for every county.

[Claire Nicholas-Author · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rising Down (Lives in a Sussex Landscape) is certainly a tour de force. Harris's book about life in Sussex across the centuries, interjected with her own memories of growing up there, must surely be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in the history of the area.

Concentrating on the people, rather than the geology and landscape, we are introduced to locals over the years who presumably had an impact on the villages, such as a notorious vicar. But we are also reminded of more well-known people, such as authors and artists, who lived in the area although not necessarily born and raised there. There are cases where Harris has been able to weave together the lives of several people, which helps towards understanding a section of a community instead of just one person, and often contains rather colourful characters.

I'd say it is an enjoyable read, but it is not a book to dip into. It is not a history book that allows the reader to pick out a chapter to answer a specific question. Yes, the Index does its job in telling us the pages where a certain word or subject is used, but the Contents page (i.e. chapter headings) could be more helpful. The reader does not know, without reading each chapter, which period is going to be covered (and even that isn't always obvious). They don't know who the main protagonist in the chapter is going to be, or where.

So let me give you a bit of a heads-up without any spoilers. The book does follow a general chronological pattern, but that's as much help as I can give you :-)

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father’s family (Fenner) originally hark from Sussex, with my grandfather arriving in Australia at the tender age of 2 nearly one hundred years ago, and I was drawn to this book in the hope that I might learn more about Mayfield, the village in which he was born, and that had been home to the Fenner family for many generations, along with Lindfield where some of my ancestors landed via marriage. And whilst these two villages were always at the back of my mind as I listened, I was soon fully engrossed in this book, regardless of whether or not they rated a mention. I loved the way that Alexandra Harris told the story of Sussex through the individuals that lived there, focussing on one family, and then another as she moved through time. Some names were familiar, such as William Blake and Virginia Wolf, most were not, but what struck me most was the way their stories were deeply connected and intertwined, eventually branching out to far flung lands, way before the advent of the World Wide Web which supposedly joins us all together. So incredibly fascinating and thought-provoking, which compensated for the fact that the book is focussed in West Sussex, rather than central/ eastern Sussex where my family originates. So no, Mayfield did not feature at all, and Lindfield had only a brief time in the spotlight, but nonetheless I am glad I read this book and now have a better understanding of Sussex - a small part of the world, but one that was all encompassing for those who lived there.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great combination of local history, biography and psychogeography. It sparked so many connections around places and places names I have known all my life and that my ancestors inhabited for many generations. It is a book I'll return to often and like all good books it has led me to seek out many others.

[Becci Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating to learn about a part of the UK which I have little knowledge about. It wasn't just about the landscape, but mainly about the people throughout history who have their own stories to tell. Their stories really came to life through the author's writing.

[Ryan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal! Although it does help to understand some of the local Sussex landscape.

[Simon Target · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really special book that moves gently from fiction to history, magic realism, poetry - exquisitely written and researched. Did you know there were boat people landing on the south coast before? During the French Revolution??