Abstract

LANDSCAPES 2018, VOL. 19, NO. 2, 169–179 BOOK REVIEWS The Language of the Landscape: A journey into Lake District history, by Angus J. L. Winchester, Dent (Cumbria), Handstand Press, 2019, viii + 290 pp., 13 B&W photographs, 15 colour plates, 13 B&W maps, £10.00 (Pbk), ISBN: 978-0-9576609-7-7 This charming and engaging book, attractively produced by a small independent regional pub- lisher, is a warmly personal view of landscape that is also informed by a strong and wide aca- demic understanding. Angus Winchester, now Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University, with an influential and innovative record of research and publication on landscapes and commons, is also a native of the Cocker Valley in NW Cumbria, the geographical focus of this book. As his university webpage tells us, the book ‘aims to be a personal exploration of landscape history in the Lake District’. It is certainly that, and an excellent example of such accounts. The shelves of high street and online bookshops, however, are these days laden with books about personally- treasured local haunts, a sub-genre of ‘new nature writing’ whose subjectivity, or more precisely the dominance of the authorial experience, can sometimes feel distracting or even oppressive. But not in this