In Walking & Talking John Dixon Hunt explores the here of the earth beneath our feet and, in a hinterland of thought and conversation, the elsewhere of the mind. He takes us on multiple journeys to both worlds in the company of great writers and artists: John Evelyn on his ascent of a lively Vesuvius in 1645; Daniel Defoe on his disappointing visit to Buxton and the Devil’s Arse; John Gay and William Hogarth in London; and Charles Dickens and the ‘inexhaustible food for speculation’ of Victorian street-life. In pursuit of elsewhere, the author follows mysterious, sometimes hidden paths (of the sort that native Australians call ‘dream tracks’), to reveal more malleable landscapes where walking indulges the mind as much as the body. It’s a place where landscape, poetry and thought cohere – sometimes literally in the sculpture of Ian Hamilton Finlay – where carefully plotted gardens invite the walker to enter a world of curated make-believe and city streets have as many stories as there are people. On wild Lakeland fells or in urban wandering, from the land of Wordsworth and Wainwright to the great wall of Teardrop Park by the site of New York’s twin towers, and from the great Picturesque parklands of England to a modern Devon garden of myth and metaphor, Walking & Talking is a beautifully illustrated companion to our simplest – and most complex – of pleasures.

Professor of the History and Theory of Landscape, Emeritus Dept of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania.