Usually when I recommend a Lake District book it’s one that I already own myself. I prefer to do this so that the blog does not degenerate into an undiscriminating commercialism.

Today, though, I’m making an exception. Although I’ve seen and admired Mark Denton’s The Lake District: The Panoramas on a number of occasions, for some unaccountable reason I’ve never actually bought a copy. However, I’ve seen this book of remarkably beautiful photographs praised so many times that I’m putting it up here anyway.

This would make a marvellous gift for a friend or family member who loves the English Lake District, or even to introduce someone for the first time to this wonderful part of the country.

There’s no doubting that Mark Denton is an outstanding landscape photographer. He has worked not only on rural but also on city landscapes including books on Edinburgh and London.  You might also like to take a look at his Yorkshire volumes: Yorkshire Moors & Wolds and The Yorkshire Coast.

I have written several times recently about the River Ribble and its tributaries, especially the Hodder.   Now, here is a new book to enjoy.

The Ribble is substantially a Lancashire river, but in fact rises in the heights above the Yorkshire Dales. These are outstanding landscapes, walking-country par excellence, from the bleakness of the river’s origins to the lushness of the mid and lower stretches of the Ribble Valley, and out past the old Preston Docks to the estuary at Lytham.

This new volume, Landscapes of the Ribble, by photographer Andy Latham (it is his first book) will be a welcome addition to the library of any lover of the region and its rivers.

Book Details:
ISBN-10: 0711230285  -  ISBN-13: 978-0711230286
Publisher: Frances Lincoln (2010)
112 pages; hardcover; 26.8 x 25.4 x 2.4 cm
Cover price: £16.99

As of 15th January Landscapes of the Ribble was priced on Amazon.co.uk at only £9.54.

The end of last month saw the launch of a biography of Joss Naylor, the legendary Lake District fell runner from Wasdale.

He’s a man of 73 now, but in his early years was a pioneer of some of the roughest running in Britain. He once ran 72 Lake District fells inside 24 hours.  And not only in his early years!  Just four months ago, on behalf of a hospice charity, he ran 35 miles and climbed over 15,000 feet over the Buttermere peaks, and including Great Gable, Pillar, Skiddaw and Blencathra on the route.

Keith Richardson has now written a biography of Joss which tells not only of his running but also of his childhood in the bleak country above Wastwater, his life as a shepherd, and the social history of the wild country of Wasdale.  The book launch at The Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, was attended by almost 400 people

Unfortunately I can’t just now include a workable link to Amazon as they don’t currently have access to copies of the book.  Apparently a single bookshop has bought up all remaining copies from the publisher!  I do hope that it will be reprinted before long, and made more generally available.  You can, though, get Eric Robson’s recent DVD, Joss Naylor – Iron Man [2009].

For many years I’ve admired the photographs of W A Poucher (1891-1988), showing the beauties of the Lake District from many different aspects – and of course, his many illustrated guides covered far more than the Lakeland mountains.  His was a lover of the high places of all the countries in our islands.

Now there’s a book devoted totally to his life and his photography which should make an excellent gift this year for anyone who’s a lover of the English (and Welsh, and Scottish) countryside and landscape photographer par excellence.

“A Camera in the Hills” by Roly Smith is published by Frances Lincoln (ISBN-10: 0711228981; ISBN-13: 978-0711228986). It is profusely illustrated with both colour and black and white photography from his long years of recording our hills and mountains.

If you click on the link above or on the photograph you can order this splendid book from Amazon.co.uk.

It was the year before I was married. (I’ll let you work out when that was; I’m just indicating that it was well within living memory). Windermere was frozen over for several weeks during that winter, and for the first time for many years it was safe to skate over large areas of its surface.

Going back a bit further – that is, a few thousand years – not only was the lake frozen, but it was under several hundred feet of ice as the glaciers of the most recent ice age (I won’t say “the last”, as it might not be, in spite of what we’re told about global warming) …. Anyway, as I was saying, just over ten thousand years ago Windermere was under a massive glacier.

Strictly speaking that isn’t true, for at that time there was no Windermere. There were two much smaller lakes, one up at the Ambleside end, and another down toward Newby Bridge. In between the two, Claife Heights (now on the western side of northern Windermere) and Cartmel Fell (now on the eastern side of southern Windermere) were joined together in one continuous belt of hills, and the two lakes were in totally separate valleys ….. although both valleys were invisible under the cold solid white stuff.

As the glacier crawled its way down toward the sea at Morecambe Bay it carved a swathe through the hillside and allowed the waters of the two lakes (once they’d thawed, centuries later) to run together and create a single lake, the longest in England, that we now know and love as Windermere.

My bookcases have for decades now carried a wide range of books about the Lake District. However, I have very few that focus on just a single lake … because there are very few such books in existence. There is, however, an excellent book about Windermere: Portrait of Windermere, by Christopher Taylor. I bought mine twenty-five years ago when it first came out and have dipped into it repeatedly down the years. The paragraphs above owe much to my most recent dipping.   Click on the title or the graphic above to find a copy through Biblio.com

Or click on this link for more on other Lake District Books

That’s all for now,

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

I have for many years found it fascinating to look at the different kinds of traditional buildings in the Lake District, Since the 1970s I have often carried with me a copy of R. W. Brunskill’s paperback field handbook, Vernacular Architecture of the Lake Counties.

Another book that has been on my shelves for more than twenty-five years is Palmer’s Historic Farmhouses in and around Westmorland, which I find especially interesting as my own forebears at various times down the centuries have lived in two of the featured properties.

An early-1990s work is Susan Denyer’s Traditional Buildings & Life in the Lake District, and even more recent (2006) is Brunskill’s Traditional Buildings of Cumbria.

Three of these can be found on the secondhand network although the Palmer book is rare and pricey (try our book search page at BrunleaBooks for access to several large networks of independent dealers around the world) whereas the latest Brunskill book can be bought new from Foyles of London, and when I last looked there was a good discount.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

What is now the Keswick Country House Hotel was originally built by the company that in 1865 launched the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway. As their new railway line into the northern Lake District replaced the previous three-hour (minimum!) journey from the Penrith mainline station by horse-drawn coach, the tourist trade expanded rapidly. A new hotel was needed alongside the station. A hundred and forty years later the hotel has adopted twentyfirst century standards while the station house now houses several executive class rooms as an extension of the hotel. The trains stopped coming to Keswick more than thirty-five years ago.

Last night while searching through a pile of old Lake District brochures in my study, looking for something entirely different from what I eventually found, I came across a book I’d forgotten about but which I presumably bought on a visit to Keswick some years back. It kept me up late reading. Here it is, a fascinatingly detailed account of the history of the railway line that ran east to west across the northern lakes area.

I’ve created a page about it on our English Lakes site with the title, “By Train to Keswick“, but if you really want to know more about this piece of Lake District history, click on the book here to see whether there’s a copy available from Biblio.com. Alternatively, try Amazon.co.uk.

Note: This book seems now to be quite rare. Shop around between the two sources here, as each will probably list several alternative book dealers – and prices tend to vary widely.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

Twenty-five years ago and more I was spending a large proportion of my professional life in the Lake District, driving up most days from Blackburn where I then lived and often staying overnight in Carlisle, or Keswick, or over in the west of the region at Eskdale Green.

I’d known the southern areas and fringes of the Lake District, the parts in Lancashire and Westmorland, fairly well from a very young age as my family came from there and I spent many childhood holidays by the Duddon and on my uncle’s farm at Gawthwaite. Now, however, in the early-80s my involvement as an adviser to several large clients, including major aspects of the economic and administrative development of the ten-year-old county of Cumbria, meant that I had to learn about it from a wide variety of other perspectives.

The late Dr. William Rollinson of the University of Liverpool was immensely helpful to the team that I was leading, briefing us on the economic and social history of the region. On my Lake District Squidoo lens I’ve given some prominence to one of Bill’s later books, his updated edition of Collingwood’s classic, The Lake Counties, sadly now out of print but sometimes available on the secondhand market. Click above on the title to see if there’s a copy available on Biblio.com. If not, try here at Amazon.co.uk

A book which I bought at the time and devoured as part of my personal briefing was by two other academics, John Marshall and John Walton, both from the University of Lancaster. The Lake Counties from 1830 to the mid-twentieth century is 300 pages of concentrated information and insight on the development of this part of the country and, unlike much academic output, is highly readable.

Click on the link above to see whether there’s currently a copy available. If you want to understand the Lake District and the past couple of centuries of its development this is, in my opinion, a “must-read”.

[Note: I have never had a problem in buying secondhand books from any book dealer over the internet, but please note carefully what the seller says about the edition and the condition.]

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

The English Lake District is well-known for its water and its mountains, but maybe less known for its gardens. And yet this “most beautiful corner of England” contains some magnificent gardens of many different varieties.

I recently came across a book that I’d missed noticing when it was first published. (Obviously my eyesight must be going in addition to my hearing, as apparently it has been well displayed in bookshops – and not only in Cumbria).

Gardens of the Lake District, by Tim Longville, is published by Frances Lincoln, 2007 [ISBN: 0711227136] and is a book not to be missed by anyone with an interest in either Lakeland or gardens. It is superbly illustrated with pictures of some magnificent gardens, many of which are open for visiting by the general public.

Next time you’re planning a visit to the Lakes use this book to help choose which gardens to visit, and if you’re too far away to visit in body let the book transport you there in mind.

Clicking on the book image above will take you to Biblio, an international network of online book dealers. You’ll be able to check there what is available, both as new and used copies, in your part of the world and order on-line.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes