Thoughtlands

This is a book is about walking and writing: about walkers who wrote, and writers who walk. It is about the circuit that exists between mind and feet, and about landscapes that exist both physically in front of you and in a line of words. And since all this walking and writing and thinking must have somewhere to take place, it is also a book about Suffolk, the author’s birthplace, and how writers have used and responded to its unmistakable magic.

Colliss Harvey travels from west to east, from chalk plain to crag; from velvety farmlands muffled by leaves to deafening shingle and uncompromising sea. She walks in excellent company – her fellow writers range from Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson to Patricia Highsmith, P. D. James, Ronald Blythe and Ruth Rendell. They include the poets George Crabbe and Robert Bloomfield; literary greats Wilkie Collins, George Orwell, and W. G. Sebald, who found a new native land here; and those born to Suffolk, such as M. R. James and Edward Fitzgerald.

The walks can be followed on foot with this book in a backpack, for those moments when walking gives way to reading, or from within the deep comfort of a favourite armchair. A bit of the writer’s notebook, a little of the memoir, and a dash of the love-letter, Thoughtlands is a one-of-a-kind literary journey and an unparalleled exploration of the Suffolk landscape.

Jacky Colliss Harvey was born in Suffolk, near the River Deben. She studied
English at Cambridge University and art history at the Courtauld Institute. She
has worked as an editor and publisher in museum publishing, as a life model and
as a film extra. Her writing has been praised as ‘quirky and deeply perceptive’,
and as ‘witty…wide-ranging and thoroughly enjoyable.’ She lives in London with
two rescue cats.