‘Meet The Author’ Warwick Library 7pm Wednesday 27th October

We are delighted that well-known author and TV presenter Christopher Somerville is coming to Warwick as part of our ‘Meet The Author’ series to talk about his new book ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat: The Geography We’ve Lost and How to Find it Again’. Perhaps best-known for ‘Coast’, ‘Somerville’s Travels’, ‘100 Best Walks’ and his regular columns in The Daily Telegraph, Christopher is an enthusiast as much for for the delights of gentle country walks in soft English countryside as adventurous treks around the world. He has spent 25 years writing and broadcasting about country walks (and tougher hikes), life in remote rural and island communities from Scotland to Crete by way of the Faroes, music-making in Irish pubs, festivals from Spain to Sweden, and the pleasure and delight of telling stories and weaving yarns. And now in his new book he wants to remind us of something that is in danger of being lost…our awareness of the geography of our own Isles.

Bognor Regis…Aberystwyth…Glasgow…Can you place them on a map? Most people can’t, these days. What kind of countryside do you pass through on your way to the Cairngorms, or the Fens, or Northumberland? What’s north of the Pennines? And what’s it like when you get there? Most folk wouldn’t have a clue. Increasing numbers of us don’t have a basic geographical notion of these islands. Blame it on a decline in formal geography teaching, or Sat-Nav and other ‘A to Z and nothing in between’ devices that make us lazy — we are becoming the best travelled and least well orientated Britons ever seen. Christopher presents the basics of what belongs where, which counties border one another, and what lies beyond the Watford Gap. He reminds us of the watery bits, the lumpy bits and the flat bits, and gets to grips with the smaller islands surrounding Britain — and much more. Never Eat Shredded Wheat is a reminder of all the fascinating British geography once learned at school – geography that brings our islands vividly to life – geography which we have forgotten, or never even knew……