Cornwall

Published in 1900, this is a portrait of Cornwall as it existed at the twilight of the Edwardian age, when tin mines still scarred the moors and smuggling lanes remained in living memory. S. Baring-Gould wanders from the granite cathedrals of Launceston to the wind-blasted reaches of the Lizard, pausing to trace the footsteps of Cornish saints, to catalogue the region's ancient holy wells, and to recount the daring exploits of the smugglers who once ran French brandy beneath the noses of excise men. The book breathes with a particular, irreplaceable atmosphere: part Victorian scholarship, part romantic travelogue, all of it steeped in the Celtic magic that still clung to this most remote of English counties. Here is a Cornwall before tourism, before mass development, preserved in prose that treats the landscape as something almost sacred. For readers drawn to Britain's forgotten corners, its ghost-haunted coasts, and the stubborn persistence of Celtic culture against the grain of English uniformity, this remains an essential companion.