The English Path

Until surprisingly late in the twentieth century almost all rural traffic, especially for shorter journeys, was on foot, made on footpaths and bridleways, often muddy in winter and hard in summer.

These paths connected settlements and took people to work, to market, to church, for business and for pleasure.

In "The English Path" Kim Taplin explores how writers and poets, from Jane Austen to Iain Sinclair, have written about these vital routes, which sustained rural life for centuries; and which were in turn powerful visions of arriving, leaving and sometimes escaping.

Today footpaths are under constant threat, but are threads of our history, laid over the land.