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Alexandra Harris

WAYFARING: Llanthony

Hay Festival 2018, 


The story of our culture over 1,000 years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. While leading a walk from the spectacular ruins of Llantony Priory up into the hills, Alexandra Harris looks at writers and artists across the centuries who, when looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Weatherland allows us to witness cultural climates on the move. The weather is vast and yet we experience it intimately, which is why Harris builds her remarkable story from small evocative details: from the Anglo-Saxons through the Norman Conquest, the Middle Ages to the Romantics there have been times for meteoric marvels and times for gentle breeze. Weatherland is a celebration of British weather and a life-story of those who have lived in it. As we enter what may be the last decades of British weather as we know it, this is a history for our times. A member of the Brecon Beacons National Park will join the walk.

Alexandra Harris