Never Eat Shredded Wheat

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. Now Christopher Somerville, bestselling author of Coast and many other books of UK exploration, 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.

Reviews of Never Eat Shredded Wheat

This is geography not as a dry academic subject full of jargon and terminology, but as the natural history of a living, evolving landscape. Economist Let's lift our heads from the flat, mechanical, simplistic world inside the video screens and feast our five senses on the earthly delights of real geography where it rules supreme: out there. Daily Express An amusing and informative read. Daily Telegraph