Allen & Unwin The Moor book History English Paperback 400 pages

William Atkins gives us the story of the moors - from Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor and Exmoor in the southwest up to the Scottish border, via Yorkshire and Northumberland - and how they have shaped our people, culture and industry.

In this deeply personal journey across our nation's most forbidding and most mysterious terrain, William Atkins takes the reader from south to north, in search of the heart of this elusive landscape. His account is both travelogue and natural history, and an exploration of moorland's uniquely captivating position in our literature, history and psyche.Atkins may be a solitary wanderer across these vast expanses, but his journey is full of encounters, busy with the voices of the moors, past and present: murderers and monks, smugglers and priests, gamekeepers and ramblers, miners and poets, developers and environmentalists. As he travels, he shows us that the fierce landscapes we associate with Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles are far from being untouched wildernesses. Daunting and defiant, the moors echo with tales of a country and the people who live in it - a mighty, age-old landscape standing steadfast against the passage of time.

William Atkins grew up in Hampshire. After studying art history, he went on to work in publishing, where he edited prize-winning fiction. He now works as a freelance editor, and studies and writes about Britain's marginal landscapes. He lives in north London.