Highways and Byways in Sussex

There is a particular kind of magic in following an elegant writer through a landscape he loves, and E.V. Lucas transports us to a Sussex that exists now only in memory. This is not a guidebook but an invitation to saunter: to leave the main roads for the winding byways that thread through the South Downs, to discover tucked-away villages where church bells still mark the hours, and to encounter the ghosts of history in crumbling ruins and ancient inns. Lucas begins his journey in Midhurst, that unassuming country town with Cowdray Park's ruins rising behind it, and from there leads readers through a Sussex of long shadows, foxglove lanes, and weathered stone. His prose moves at the walking pace he advocates, pausing for a anecdote about a local character, a architectural detail, or simply the way light falls across a meadow. This is travel writing as it used to be written: leisurely, literate, and more interested in what a place feels like than what it offers tourists. For readers who find modern travel guides hollow, who crave the slower rhythms of pre-motor England, or who simply want to be transported to a sunny afternoon on a Sussex hillside, this book remains a perfect companion.