'Theirs was a pre-urban world in the glow of its last sunset, without a care or doubt, in which it seemed as if nothing could ever come to harm. Here was their version of that ideal world that has haunted the dreamer, rebel and pastoral poet for centuries.'
Between 1850 and 1939 such well-known writers as Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf and Richard Jefferies came to Sussex, a county already home to the likes of Wilfrid Blunt, Hilaire Belloc and others. The result was an explosion of literary creativity which rejected modernity and the London scene, and instead developed writing imbued with a sense of nature and landscape.
In this, his last book, Peter Brandon (1927–2011) has drawn on his vast knowledge of the Sussex landscape to show how such writers, seeking a foil to London, were inspired by their surroundings and found peace and a tranquillity which existed in few other places.
Mengenai Pengarang
Brian Short has a BA and Ph D from the University of London, FRGS. He is a Professor Emeritus (Geography) at the University of Sussex. He has been a council member of Sussex Archaeological Society and editor of the Sussex Archaeological Collections and was a founder member Sussex Downs Conservation Board (forerunner of the National Park). He was also an invited founder member of Board of Trustees for the County History Trust (for the Victoria County History), and was appointed as a member of the VCH panel of peer reviewers in 2006. He has been president of the Sussex Record Society since 2011 and is currently an editorial board member for the journal Landscape History and Collins internationally renowned New Naturalist series. He is also currently chair of an external advisory board to the Centre for Regional and Local History at the University of Leicester.