This deep dive into Cornwall’s history, landscape and identity should be stacked on service-station counters all along the A303 this summer.

A magnificent work of travel and historical deconstruction – deeply personal, meticulously researched and hugely enjoyable.

Tim Hannigan writes with an authentic Cornish voice and a true internationalist’s breadth of understanding.

Anyone – tourist or resident – who has been seduced by the beauty and strangeness of Cornwall will find Tim Hannigan a congenial guide and companion.

Beautifully researched and written with care.

Hannigan roams the country on foot, stitching together not only its geography but its histories and communities, while disentangling fact from myth, folk from folklore’

Absorbing and insightful… skilfully interweaves geography, geology, travel memoir and history with an overview of the ways in which Cornwall has been portrayed in art and literature. There’s a lot to explore.

The best kind of traveller, Hannigan is brimful of boundless curiosity… a beguiling book that throbs with passion, Hannigan has captured a portrait of a hidden and often mysterious Cornwall, conveying it with style, ternderness and passion

PRAISE FOR TIM HANNIGAN:

‘An excellent and thought-provoking book… What could have been a scholarly theoretical discourse is thoroughly enlivened by Tim Hannigan’s decision to turn it into a travel odyssey’ TLS.

‘Travel writing used to be dominated by Old Etonians with colonialist tendencies; but [Tim Hannigan’s] well-researched critique shows that the “travellees” are writing back’ Guardian.

‘A highly readable and entertaining narrative’ Lonely Planet.

‘A deft piece of genre-hopping’ Telegraph.

‘A timely look at the genre – why we travel, and why and how we write about it’