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Paths to the Past
- Encounters with Britain's Hidden Landscapes
- Narrated by: Francis Pryor
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
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Paths to the Past
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Summary
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Paths to the Past written and read by Francis Pryor.
Landscapes reflect and shape our behaviour. They make us who we are and bear witness to the shifting patterns of human life over the generations. Formed by a complex series of natural and human processes, they rarely yield their secrets readily. Bringing to bear a lifetime's digging, Francis Pryor delves into England's hidden urban and rural landscapes, from Whitby Abbey to the navvy camp at Risehill in Cumbria, from Tintagel to Tottenham's Broadwater Farm. Scattered through fields, woods, moors, roads, tracks and towns, he reveals the stories of our physical surroundings and what they meant to the people who formed them, used them and lived in them. These landscapes, he stresses, are our common physical inheritance. If we can understand how to make them yield up their secrets, it will help us, their guardians, to maintain and shape them for future generations.
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What listeners say about Paths to the Past
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Katy Jazmin Best
- 20-08-20
Paths to understanding our world
Always enjoy listening to and learning from Pryor, excellent writer and excellent reader, lots of new perspectives to think about!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- YorkshireMores
- 19-02-21
Gentle, educational meander around Britain
I do love Francis Pryor! His narration is gentle but witty, and I love the autobiographical details he drops in to his books that stops them feeling like a history lecture. Wonderfully informative and visually described - I don't always agree with his choice of places but it does mean I've learned about things I would never have read about left to my own devices!
This is a 'must listen' for anyone interested in how Britain came to be, and why.
My only gripe is the thing about the North Yorkshire Moors in the Whitby segment, where Francis mentions Wuthering Heights on a couple of occasions. I would have thought an historian (especially one who knows North Yorkshire so well) would know that the Brontes wrote about the other side of the county, not here!
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Alec Sharples
- 05-05-20
A ramble across ancient Britain
A wonderfully entertaining and educational ramble across the ancient paths and roads of Britain.
I had the great fortune to read this right after the Stonemason's Tale which added another layer of understanding to the wonderfully rich history of our great land.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- S Hewett
- 30-06-20
Stuffy, but some good bits
So-so. Bit nostalgic and sentimenta, and repetitive towards the end. It's quite short so I persevered
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