Landmarks (35 page)

Authors: Robert Macfarlane

BOOK: Landmarks

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Shetland Dialect Dictionary
:
http://www.shetlanddialect.org.uk/john-j-grahams-shetland-dictionary-intro

Acknowledgements

I thank first, and profoundly, those among the living who have inspired this book, and who are written about here: Anne Campbell, Peter Davidson, Simon Fitzwilliam-Hall, Barry Lopez, Finlay MacLeod, Autumn Richardson, Richard Skelton and Deb Wilenski. The Peat Glossary (the glossary that began
Landmarks
) was compiled by Catriona Campbell, Kenneth Campbell, Ruairidh MacIlleathain, Donald Morrison and Mary Smith, as well as by Anne and Finlay. ‘A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’ (the chapter that began
Landmarks
) was initially encouraged by the writer and editor Gareth Evans, one of the most intellectually generous people it has been my luck to know.

The jaw-dropping global glossary about which I write in the Postscript is the work of Simon Fitzwilliam-Hall. Its full name as a project-in-progress is ‘Language in the Landscape: A Multilingual Glossary of Topographical Terms and Place-Name Elements in the Afro-Eurasian Lands’ (or ‘The Topoglossary’ for short). Simon can be contacted on [email protected].

Landmarks
could never have reached the page without the expertise of Philip Sidney, who turned the glossaries from a helter-skelter welter of words into a navigable delta of categories and subcategories. He was, throughout, painstaking, patient, dedicated, imaginative, sharp-sighted – and good-humoured, even when the going got seriously
stuggy
. Julith Jedamus close-read the first draft with typical acuity and attention; she has now crucially shaped three of my books. Simon Prosser has been editorially brilliant, a fine friend, and solid as a
klett
in terms of support. Jessica Woollard, as ever, has been staunch and subtle as agent, friend and reader. At Penguin I have been fortunate enough to work with Richard Bravery, Anna Kelly, Claire Mason, Anna Ridley and Emma Brown, and to be copy-edited by the lynx-eyed Caroline Pretty. It remains a huge privilege to collaborate with Stanley Donwood. Jonathan Gibbs’s woodcuts for the glossaries are rich and strange.

The relations of language and landscape have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, but I am hardly the first to be drawn to the subject. The bibliography details some of the texts and music that have informed
Landmarks
, but I would note here that I have been influenced and guided especially by Tim Robinson (the
Stones of Aran
diptych and the
Connemara
trilogy); Richard Mabey (
Flora Britannica
); Sue Clifford and Angela King’s
England in Particular
(which shows that celebratory particularism is quite distinct from triumphant nationalism), as well as the wider activities and publications of Common Ground (co-founded by Sue and Angela with Roger Deakin); the research and writing of the great place-name scholar Margaret Gelling; the ninety-year-long labours of the English Place-Name Society; Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney’s
Home Ground
; Bill Griffiths’ extraordinary work in his ‘Wor’ trilogy (
Stotties and Spicecake
,
Pitmatic
and
Fishing and Folk
); and the ongoing writing and music of Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson. I thank also the photographer Dominick Tyler: Dom and I first discovered our common passion for this terrain in 2007–8; and then five years later realized we were both writing books on the subject. Dom’s
Uncommon Ground
(London: Faber and Faber, 2015) contains his exceptional photographs of a hundred land features, as well as his accounts of seeking them out up and down the country. His online crowd-sourced glossary of place-terms, ‘The Landreader’, can be seen and contributed to at:
http://www.thelandreader.com/
.

The compilation of my glossaries proceeded slowly for a decade or so, before reaching its blizzard phase during the past eighteen months. I have met with such kindness in that time; so many people have shared words with me. I thank in particular (as well as those named above and in the book): Ben Cartwright, Amy Cutler, Gavin Francis, Melissa Harrison, Henry Hitchings, Amy Gear, Caroline and Kurt Jackson, Stuart Kelly, Chamu Kuppuswamy, Rosamund Macfarlane, Matthew Oates, ‘Dawn Piper’, Jane Stevenson, Winifred Stevenson and Ken Worpole. Bob Jellicoe has been a constant source of ideas and language: his tape recordings of Suffolk longshoremen, made nearly half a century ago, constitute a precious trove of East Anglian coastal culture. Meriel Martin’s recent research into Exmoor dialect, and the questions of language for landscape more broadly, has been exemplary; my thanks to Meriel for allowing me to
fossick
freely in the extensive glossaries she gathered.

In addition, for their contributions to the glossaries, I am grateful to Bill Adams, Sean Borodale, Nick Bullock, Alex Buxton, Horatio Clare, Rachel Cooke, Adrian Cooper, Mark Goodwin, Rody Gorman, Nick Groom, Alexandra Harris, Geraint Jennings, Mari Jones, Roger Jones, Pat Law, Liz Lloyd, Cathlin Macaulay, John
Macfarlane, Malachi McIntosh, Roy McMillan, Leo Mellor, Benjamin Morris, Kate Norbury, Darryl Ogier, Liz Ogilvie, Jules Pretty, Fiona Reynolds, Rob St John, James Smith, Jos Smith, Ian Stephen, Sarah Thomas, Malachy Tulloch and Stephen Watts.

For other kinds of help, support, thought and encouragement, thanks to Myles Archibald, Will Atkins, Jeff Barrett, Terence Blacker, James Canton, Debjani Chatterjee, Mike Collier, Patrick Curry, William Dalrymple, Rufus Deakin, Steve Dilworth, Naomi Geraghty, Alison Hastie, Michael Hurley, Robert Hyde, Grace Jackson, Joe Kennedy, Peter Larkin, Hayden Lorimer, Victoria McArthur, Andrew McNeillie, Duncan Minshull, George Monbiot, Helen Mort, Andrew Ray, Graham Riach, Di Robson, Titus and Jasmin Rowlandson, Chris and Jan Schramm, Stephen Taylor, Rosy Thornton, Robin Turner, Andrew Walsh, Marina Warner, Kirk Watson, Roderick Watson, Caroline Wendling, Simon Williams, Kabe Wilson, David Woodman and Mark Wormald.

I am indebted to various institutions, chief among them Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I am fortunate enough to hold a teaching fellowship; and the Faculty of English, Cambridge, where I hold a senior lectureship. Conversations with my students (notable among them Tom Gilliver, Anna Main, Charles Rousseau, Napper Tandy and Lewis Wynn) were vital to the development of
Landmarks
– as was the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust. The Trust’s trust in me, and its support – logistical and financial – of the book’s writing, has been outstanding. I am grateful also to the Cambridge University Library and the London Library.

For permission to quote from the published and unpublished work of J. A. Baker, I thank the Baker Estate and Myles Archibald at HarperCollins. Nigel Cochrane and Sandy Macmillen at the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex, made my time in the Baker Archive both possible and pleasurable. John Fanshawe’s efforts in bringing Baker’s archive to Essex, transcribing and editing the journals, and extending our knowledge of Baker’s life and world, have been immense. John also expertly read my Baker chapter.

For permission to quote from the published and unpublished work of Jacquetta Hawkes, I am grateful to Nicolas Hawkes, as well as to Christine Finn for her permission to quote from her unpublished biography of Jacquetta Hawkes, and to Special Collections, University of Bradford Library, for access to the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive and for permission to reproduce unpublished material.

For permission to quote from the poetry of Norman MacCaig, I am grateful to the MacCaig Estate, and to Neville Moir at Polygon.

For permission to quote from the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid, I am grateful to Carcanet Press.

For permission to quote from the work of Nan Shepherd and from his own memories of Nan, and for other kinds of support, I am grateful to her literary executor, Erlend Clouston. I am grateful also to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland and to Dairmid Gunn for permission to quote from Neil Gunn’s letters, and to George Mackie for permission to quote from Nan’s letters to Barbara Balmer.

I sometimes wonder if I will ever find a subject other than landscape to write about, having done so for fifteen years – but soon after always conclude that it is unlikely, given that the terrain is infinite in its interest and unfathomable in its complexities. I have been circling the books and ideas at the core of
Landmarks
for years now; some of the chapters here have now been close to a decade in their thinking and revising. I am grateful to all those editors who have enabled and encouraged me along the way, among them Lisa Allardice, Myles Archibald, Jamie Byng, Nick Davies, Charlotte Knight, Julia Koppitz, Paul Laity, Norah Perkins, Susanna Rustin and Helen Tookey. Notably (as above), ‘A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’ found its first expression in
Towards Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings
, ed. Gareth Evans and Di Robson (London: ArtEvents, 2010), and ‘The Living Mountain’ began as a long essay prefacing the 2011 Canongate reissue of Nan Shepherd’s masterpiece of the same name. Fragments of ‘Hunting Life’ have their origin in my 2005 Introduction to the NYRB Classics reissue of Baker’s
The Peregrine
, and some paragraphs of ‘The Black Locust and the Silver Pine’ were part of an Introduction to a 2006 edition of Muir’s
My First Summer in the Sierra
. ‘Bastard Countryside’ and ‘Stone-Books’ both began in 2011 as essays for the Collins Nature Library on Jefferies and Hawkes respectively. I have written and spoken on Lopez and Deakin in numerous different places and at numerous different times.

Finally, above all and for ever, love and thanks to Julia, Lily, Tom and Will.