Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places - Tapa dura

Rangey, deeply felt and sometimes luminous ... Like the raking light that exposes ancient lynchets at sunset, such knowledge brings out new detail in the one particular view over a gate which Pavord has loved in all seasons, and which she now evokes for us as it changes through a full year. From the vantage point of this ending, I look back and find that the mixed landscape of the whole book is cast in a very beautiful light (Alexandra Harris Guardian)

Intensely enjoyable . Anna Pavord is a beautiful writer who feels her subject deeply and with a lifetime's enjoyment and understanding (Lucy Lethbridge Observer)

A lyrical defence of our landscape, its language, and its freedom from meddling by various agencies ... a real pleasure (Mail on Sunday)

The whole book reads like a conversation at some fantasy dinner party where all the guests are impeccably informed, fervently opinionated, gently witty and incurably passionate about the countryside. It darts from topic to topic, century to century, painter to ploughman, mountain to meadow, like some mercurially active salmon making its way up the Dart or the Dee. Yet miraculously - or, more likely, thanks to Pavord's beautifully descriptive but never indulgent prose - it all hangs together. You can read the whole book in less time than it takes to go up and down Ben Nevis, and feel that you have bagged not just the king of Munros but the rural delights of an entire kingdom . Landskipping, however, is not some environmental rant. Pavord still sees plenty to celebrate about the British landscape, and plenty to send a delicious shiver up the spine as well (The Times)

Her eye can catch the colouring of a distant hill, the move of sun across a contour and the run of sheep into a dark cwm. She can talk to rooks in the treetops and smell flowers in a hedgerow. She was born to the countryside purple.
Landskipping is a hymn to the British landscape . intensely felt and totally engaged. . She is a beautiful writer

(Simon Jenkins Country Life)

Anyone who loves the variety and idiosyncrasies of the British countryside will relish this poignant celebration (Independent)

Pavord is a great excavator of roots . Pavord threads together a patchwork of history, nature writing, polemic and memoir. Always she remains attuned to the sensual character of the environment . I was suitably entranced by its many splendid views and perspectives (Sunday Telegraph)

Pavord writes thoughtfully, with deep and wide-ranging knowledge, of the land and what grows on it, of art, literature and the history of taste. And she writes from the heart - the heart of a countrywoman as well as the country-lover . The fruit of genuine observation, described with straining for effect, it's a wonderful piece of writing - one of many in this superb, heartfelt and illuminating book (Literary Review)

[A] winning study of English landscape (Lucy Scholes BBC Countryfile)

An insight into landscape's cultural impact to highlight the ability of wide open spaces to inspire and provide (Sunday Times)