Walking Home - Softcover

Armitage, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753153211 ISBN 13: 9780753153215

Publisher: ISIS Large Print Books, 2014

Synopsis

In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born. Travelling as a 'modern troubadour' without a penny in his pocket, he stopped along the way to give poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. His audiences varied from the passionate to the indifferent, and his readings were accompanied by the clacking of pool balls, the drumming of rain and the bleating of sheep. WALKING HOME describes this extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey. It's a story about Britain's remote and overlooked interior - the wildness of its landscape and the generosity of the locals who sustained him on his journey. It's about facing emotional and physical challenges, and sometimes overcoming them. It's nature writing, but with people at its heart. Contemplative, moving and droll, it is a unique narrative from one of our most beloved writers. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60% of the author's work and as low as 30% with characters and plotlines removed.

About this title

About the Author:

Simon Armitage is the award-winning poet and translator of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Death of King Arthur, as well as several works of poetry, prose, and drama. He is the Oxford Professor of Poetry.

Review:

“[Armitage] displays a sharp appreciation of place, both in its unique contours and its mystery... doling out small stories―about the people he walks with or the history of the landscape, the misery of midges or the terror of a deep fog high in the Uplands―that flash like sun on chrome.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Starred review. [A]n ingenious idea for a journey and a brilliant idea for a book, which includes some of his poems. In this entertaining jaunt through rural Britain and unpredictable weather, part travel guide and part memoir, Armitage describes his adventures, from collie dogs growling at his heels and “mean-looking cows” to the unbridled generosity of strangers. A travel gem.”
- Booklist

“Part pilgrimage and part stunt... He writes with self-effacing humor and mixes a few of his own poems with memoir, natural history, and literary reflections... Though Armitage complains at times that the Pennine Way is an ‘unglamorous slog among soggy, lonely moors” ...his account is never a slog for the reader.”
- New Yorker

“Never showy or excitable, his prose has a steady, phlegmatic, gently propulsive rhythm perfectly suited to the matter at hand, his sentences in tune with his feet.”
- Ben Downing, The Wall Street Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: ISIS Large Print Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0753153211
• ISBN 13: 9780753153215
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296