I know Ireland pretty well.
I know the narrow roads, the whispering reeds, the yellow gorse flowers, the flitting wren in the corner of your eye. With the swinging gait of a home bird, I climb over gates without ceremony and walk through farmyards without waking dogs.
But Britain I know through the eyes of writers. All roads lead to Haworth, Cornwall is a place of bicycles and mad poets and you couldn’t pay me to go to Stratford upon Avon. But lighthouses and thought-foxes be damned, everyone loves a good rabbit story.
A brilliant woman ahead of her time, Beatrix Potter was a force of and for nature; by the time she died, she had amassed 4,000 acres of unspoilt land in the UK’s Lake District. The Tale of Peter Rabbit funded the purchase of Hill Top farm; the proceeds of her further bestsellers and signed drawings were devoted to saving land from development. A gifted scientific illustrator, Beatrix spent the later years of her life documenting lichens and raising her beloved Herdwick she…
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