Through England on a Side-saddle

Journeying through England on horseback, the intrepid seventeenth-century traveller Celia Fiennes recorded every sight and experience of her adventure in her journal, from her delight at countryside cakes and the beauty of remote landscapes, to the challenges of disagreeable landladies, choppy sea crossings and a troublesome horse. Describing potteries in Staffordshire, cheesemaking in Cheshire, dyers in Exeter and tin miners in Cornwall, her writings give an unrivalled glimpse into an England of bustling industry and rich variety.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too. It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it. "English Journeys" celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).