SYNOPSIS:
With more than 20 million visitors each year, the Lake District retains its fascination for people from all over Britain and abroad. Ian Thompson, who grew up in nearby Barrow-in-Furness and went fell-walking from an early age, is well-equipped to reveal the area's allure. He tells how it was the chance combination of a fascination with the Alps and the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars that provided the spark for a national obsession. And in brief elegant chapters he shows how Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and De Quincey transformed the perception of the region from one of 'horrid mountains' to 'vales of peace'. Later the work of J. M. W. Turner, John Ruskin, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome and Alfred Wainwright, the great populariser of fell-walking, all in their different ways contributed to making the region what it is today. Crammed with fascinating detail and illustrated with Thompson's own superb colour photography and more than 80 other colour illustrations, The English Lakes is sheer delight.
REVIEW:
Having spent a lot of my formative years in the Lake District I’ve grown up with not only the heritage but the sheer beauty of the area and even met some of the characters including Tony Warburton as well as Alfred Wainwright. This book by Ian Thompson is a wonderful tribute to the area taking you through the history as well as allowing people to see the sheer abundance of places to visit when they made either their day trip plans or their holiday ones.
Add to this a book that is written with great affinity to the area by an author who clearly wanted to bring the subject to the masses and with great description and wonderful photography alongside image reproduction and all in this is a book that will be thumbed through quite a few times.
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