Literature

Quiz: Hills and Literature

Not all our literary heroes are mountaineers. But some of them are… A quiz to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of this Substack, not to mention Christmas…

Dec 24, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Enid Blyton hikes

I was going to post about Coleridge again. But then I stopped at my local café for a haggis-and-cheese toastie. [1000 words, 4 mins

Dec 3, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Emily Bronte and the Bog Burst of 1824

A near-death experience for two little girls may have helped inspire 'Wuthering Heights'. [1800 words 7 mins

Jul 30, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Five days from London to Canterbury following English literature's first ever long-distance trail

Apr 16, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Lily Briscoe, who isn't Alpine climber Lily Bristow

Is Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ a book about mountains? Well yes, sort of ….

Apr 9, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Charles Dickens climbs Carrock Fell

Carrock being a 2174ft high hill in the Lake District. Meanwhile Wilkie Collins is doing all he can to keep up ... [1200 words 5 mins

Feb 19, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Bolt-on emotion: Romanticism part 2

English Romanticism trickles through into mountain writing of today [1300 words 6 mins

Jan 29, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Leslie Stephen climbs Mont Blanc

Leslie Stephen was knighted for his services as a Victorian man of letters, in particular as the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Jan 15, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Jane Austen Walks

What are men to rocks and mountains? The importance of the Outdoors in the 1810s. [1500 words 7 mins

Jan 1, 2025 • Ronald Turnbull

Stories about Walking

Fictional treatments of long-distance travel on foot: Harold Fry and 'You Are Here' [1400 words 6 mins

Nov 27, 2024 • Ronald Turnbull

Egdon Heath – a fictitious moorland in Dorset

It takes a hardy soul to cross the bleak moorland – a Thomas Hardy soul… [1500 words 7 min

Oct 30, 2024 • Ronald Turnbull

The trip into the mountains

Very short short-story by Franz Kafka [1100 wsords, 5 mins

Sep 11, 2024 • Ronald Turnbull

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