Rising Ground: Place Writing Now

It's not about travelling across the world to exotic places: it's about digging where you stand.

Writing about place – a sub-genre of travel writing that subverts it by being about staying put, rather than moving – has been enjoying an extraordinary vogue of late. Three of the genre’s finest practitioners joined us at the shop to discuss its significance and future. Philip Marsden’s Rising Ground (Granta) explores the small part of Cornwall to which he has recently transplanted himself; Julian Hoffman, in The Small Heart of Things (Georgia) finds home around the shores of Greece's Prespa lakes, and Ken Worpole in The New English Landscape, a collaboration with the photographer Jason Orton (Field Station), proposes a new paradigm for topographical beauty based on the post-industrial landscape of the Thames estuary. The evening was hosted by Gareth Evans.

Photograph courtesy of Jason Orton