In the original dustsheet. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

The unique beauty of the British countryside has been celebrated down the ages in music, poetry, and art. It has also been celebrated in countless private diaries. This delightful treasury gathers together the very finest – from Rev Gilbert White’s journal of life at his famous home in Selborne to Beatrix Potter’s holiday diaries from Perthshire. Elsewhere, the thoughts of Dorothy Wordsworth and John Fowles rub shoulders with the words of Queen Victoria, Siegfried Sassoon and Roger Deakin. Together, these private records, which have been arranged as a diary of the calendar year, paint a rich and surprising portrait of a landscape and a life we think we know so well.

Reviews:

• A fascinating portrait of country life across the centuries told by the nation’s greatest diarists . . . dip into it each day to see how endlessly gripping and entertaining everyday life can be. –Country Life

• The arch-editor appears to have scoured the hedgerows, rolled over boulders and scaled Britain’s mountains in his search. For he has unearthed a diverse range of authors – from literary greats such as Hardy and Scott; to playwrights and poets, such as Bennett and Sassoon to more contemporary sources, like Roger Deakin and Derwent May. –Scottish Field

Alan has been a journalist for over 30 years. He was deputy and managing editor at The Scotsman, and Associate Editor of the Sunday Herald. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited several acclaimed anthologies – The Assassin’s Cloak, The Secret Annexe, The Country Dairies (Canongate), and Glasgow: The Autobiography (Birlinn). His most recent book is the best-seller Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark (Polygon) and he is the editor of the centenary editions of the Collected Novels of Muriel Spark (Polygon). He has been the editor and board member of the Scottish Review of Books since 2004 and has been involved with Emerging Critics since the beginning.