The Moorlands of England

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

British-born Dudley Witney is an internationally recognized photographer
who lives in Canada. His books include such intimate portraits of North
America as The Barn, The Lighthouse, and Atlantic Canada; but the
protean moods and weather of the English moors have offered him a
special inspiration. British-based Adam Hopkins travels the world on
writing assignments, but feels most at home on the English moors with a
map and a good raincoat. Through their collaboration on The Moorlands of
England they have captured the subtle beauty of these ancient
areas—Bodmin, Exmoor, Dartmoor, the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District
of Derbyshire, and the hills of Northumberland—which still retain much
of their original wildness.

The text consists of five chapters, dealing with the nature of the
moors; the “Firstcomers”; the history of the moors; their place in
the imagination, as witnessed through legend and local lore; and “The
Living Moors” of contemporary usage. This last chapter focuses on an
environmental message, a plea, and a warning that “the price of the
wilderness is eternal vigilance.” Farmers, landowners, visitors, and
the hunt are all features of daily life on the moors, and all pose
perils to their survival.

Hopkins’s sensitive and poetic style complements the photographs. His
opening speaks of the sense of the primordial found on the English
moors, “a ruggedness we recognize as if the moors themselves were a
dreamscape of our own, the wild part of our natures.” Many of
Witney’s splendid photos catch this sense of the primordial: photos of
endangered prehistoric woodlands, eerie stone tors, and the vast
stepping stones across the River Lyd that seem to have been laid down by
a giant.

The Moorlands of England is a quietly beautiful book, as subtle as the
landscape that inspired it. It includes an index, some maps, and helpful
travel information for those wishing to see the moors for themselves.