In a lovely piece for The Guardian, Phoebe Taplin follows in the footsteps through Dorset of Thomas Hardy, one of the writers featured in the first book by her mother, Kim, The English Path. It’s to be published in a new edition this month by Little Toller.

“A love of Hardy,” Phoebe writes, “was one of the reasons Kim moved to Dorset, where she spent her final years. He is one of six writers she singles out as a rich source of footpath imagery. Since she died, I’ve been following paths linked with these writers as a kind of footsore memorial: tramping through Cambridgeshire bluebell woods near Helpston, where the poet John Clare lived, and climbing the long grassy banks of Maiden Castle, a huge iron age Dorset hill fort that inspired the novelist John Cowper Powys.”