English Lakes: A History - Softcover

Ian Thompson studied Philosophy at the University of Newcastle (1974-77), and later completed a B. Phil and Ph. D. in Landscape Architecture. After qualifying as a landscape architect he worked in practice first in Glasgow and then on Tyneside. Between 1986 and 1992 he was a Senior Landscape Architect in the Planning Department of Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council. He currently teaches postgraduate Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University. He is the author of the Sun King's Garden. Ian Thompson was born and bred in Barrow-in-Furness and now lives in Gosport with his wife and child.

`Thompson's superb book reminds us that we all have a right to explore and to be spiritually refreshed by our English countryside, and that away from the Cumbrian bottlenecks it is still there, untrammelled and inspirational and as utterly breathtaking as Thompson's photographs so brilliantly demonstrate' * Val Hennessy, Daily Mail * `A handsomely illustrated history of the Lakes, full of odd characters and glorious landscapes' * Country Life * `Accompanied by magnificent photographs, Thompson, who grew up in nearby Barrow-in-Furness, writes of the way in which Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and DeQuincey transformed the perception of the Lake District and celebrates the work of Turner, John Ruskin, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome and Alfred Wainright' * The Times * 'What Thompson's book brings out is that almost as soon as the beauty of the Lake District became widely recognised, well-meaning people, often armed with sensible arguments, set about destroying it' * John Carey, Sunday Times *