Explorer Britain [antikvár]

, ( My Britain Tim Locke has contributed to more than 30 guides to Britain, having walked, cycled and driven around every county and national park. Richard Cavendish— who wrote most of the Britain Is, Britain Was and Focus On features—has written numerous books on Britain. Travel writer Barnaby Rogerson, the author of Explorer Britain's Scottish chapters, has contributed to other AA books on Scotland. From my house in Sussex I can look upon Lewes Castle, an administrative headquarters set up in Norman times. The town's main thoroughfare slopes down between numerous Georgianized half-timbered buildings, past the White Hart Hotel—where Tom Paine held meetings in the 18th century—to family-run Harvey's brewery, little changed in over a hundred years. A short walk away are the sheep-grazed slopes of the South Downs, dotted with ancient remains. On one slope is the site of the Battle of Lewes, where in 1264 Simon de Montfort defeated Henry 111, forcing him to grant rights that paved the way for parliamentary democracy. 1 find this sense of continuum an impressive aspect of Britain: its landscapes, both rural and urban, pockmarked with historical incident. I sometimes wonder what else would strike me about Britain if 1 had never seen it before. I imagine being confronted with a series of cameos: a sheep auction in Mid Wales, with cloth caps and ruddy Celtic faces in abundance; the landscapes of East Anglia, where the quality of light imparts subtle differences each time a view is encountered; a county cricket match at the spa town of Tunbridge Wells; or the hypnotic patter of a dealer at London's Brick Lane market. Britain, as much as any other corner of the earth, has been much visited and much written about. This book is our selection of the most rewarding places in the kingdom. It doesn't include every city or attraction, but aims to be a balance between the well known and the less obvious. It constantly surprises me that, in an age ever tending toward standardization, so many aspects of Britain have survived intact: its communities, its lifestyles, its idiosyn-cracies. The pressure to change is still there, but there has been a realization that we need our heritage as a point of reference to tell us who we are. It would take a great deal to erode that national persona. Tim Locke