A richly illustrated guide to the literature and landscape of Norfolk
One of the places featured in Literary Norfolk
The view from Happisburgh Church - with the Hill House from Conan Doyle's 'Dancing Men' below left and 'the violet rim of the German ocean appear[ing] over the green edge of the Norfolk coast'.
Journey to the north coast and the very edge of Norfolk - 'a frayed margin, of opportunity and possibilities' to naturalist Richard Mabey. Shiver at Blakeney with the Spook Stories (1928) of E F Benson, or move with care through the 'strange alien world of sea creeks and mudflats' of Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed (1975). Wonder at a landscape 'with light pouring everywhere' witnessed by poet Katherine Pierpoint or scrunch along the 'ribbed distances' of Brancaster beach with novelist Angela Huth. Watch the tides turn in the 'Waterslain' land of poet, scholar and children's writer Kevin Crossley-Holland, a place haunted by the bleak vision of Patrick Hamilton and shadowed by Burnham Overy mill and the 'repressed, difficult' territory of Henry Sutton's Bank Holiday Monday (1996). Walk through the wrought iron gates of Holt School, where poet W H Auden and novelist John Lanchester once sat behind their desks. Set sail from Langham with seafaring novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, or from Morston under the Watercolour Sky (1990) of William Rivière. Listen with Sylvia Townsend Warner to an east wind at Salthouse that 'sobs and whimpers like a Brontë in the kitchen'. Plough a lonely furrow with Henry Williamson through unyielding fields at Stiffkey, or watch for a glimpse of the 'distant wandering face' of poet Stevie Smith at Wiveton.
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