“Why do we react so strongly to certain places? Why do layers of mythology build up around particular features in the landscape? When Philip Marsden moved to a remote creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land’s End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe… Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man’s perennial struggle to belong on this earth.”

I will state boldly, that Rising Ground is another book that I wish I had written. Philip Marsden is a gifted writer, with an ability to conjure up place from the page. He also manages to go beyond the sense of place, and in seeking the ‘spirit’ of it, he connects people to the landscape.

Cornwall is rich in history, and Marsden’s journey west towards Lands End, not taking the well-trodden paths, is fascinating and absorbing. It is a woven narrative with the renovation of the crumbled building his family have moved into, tucked away in old mine country, in the upper reaches of The Fal.

Rather like Robert MacFarlane, each place is a chapter, giving space for Marsden’s descriptions, research and pondering to breathe.  Even before the reader turns the first page of a chapter, Marsden tempts you in with an exploration of the origins of the name of the place – invoking its spirit. It is a journey the reader takes with him, as Marsden is generous with his own process and reflection.

As someone who has been curious about the world, inspired by a wonderful geography teacher in school, and then the subject of my first degree. I have been lucky enough to travel widely, but in coming to Cornwall, I too have found a gravity to place that I have not experienced anywhere else I’ve lived (and I’ve lived in a number of rural and city locations, with four years in the immediate post-Communist Poland). Perhaps his book speaks to me because of my wanderlust, my own curiosity and my joy at feeling home.

Marsden’s writing is sublime, better even than The Levelling Sea, with spine-tingling lines such as:

“There have been times writing this book, trying to reach the meaning of a place across the ages, when I have felt a shadow pass over my desk”

Rising Ground is a wonderful book, and Marsden makes me want to pull on my walking boots and wander the paths less travelled across Cornwall.