The discovery of britain, p.48
The Discovery of Britain, page 48
Westminster Bridge ref1
Westminster Hall ref1, ref2
Westminster School ref1
Weston-super-Mare (Somerset) ref1
Whitchurch (Shropshire) map 4
White Horse Hill (Berkshire) ref1
Whitechapel (Middlesex) ref1, ref2
Whitechapel Mount ref1
Whiteflood, nr Owslebury ref1
Whitehall, London ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
White’s Alley, London ref1
Whitley Castle, Alston map 4
Whitmore (Staffordshire) ref1
Wight, Isle of ref1
Wildwood estate, Stafford ref1
Wiltshire ref1, ref2
Wiltshire Avon river ref1
Wiltshire–Berkshire border ref1
Winchcombe, shire or sub-shire ref1
Winchelsea (Sussex) ref1
Winchester (Hampshire) ref1; map 4
Winchester College ref1, ref2
Windrush river ref1, ref2
Windsor Castle or Palace ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Winterton Ness (Norfolk) map 4
Wirral Peninsula ref1
Witham river ref1; map 5 (inset)
Wittenberg, Germany ref1
Wolverhampton (Staffordshire) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Woolsthorpe (Lincolnshire) ref1
Woolwich Dockyard (Kent) ref1
Woolworths’, Brixton ref1
Wor Well, source of Little Avon ref1
Worcester ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20
Worcester, battle (1651) ref1; map 1
Worcester and Birmingham Canal ref1
Worcester Cathedral ref1, ref2
Worcester Cathedral Priory ref1
Worcester County and City Pauper Lunatic Asylum see Powick Mental Hospital
Worcester Royal Grammar School ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Worcestershire ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11
Worcestershire Beacon, Malvern Hills ref1; map 1
Worcestershire–Oxfordshire border ref1
Worcestershire Plain ref1, ref2
Wrangle (Lincolnshire) ref1
The Wrekin, hill (Shropshire) ref1, ref2
Writtle (Essex) ref1
Wroxeter (Shropshire) map 4
Wychwood Forest (Oxfordshire) ref1
Wye river ref1; map 5 (inset)
Wyre Forest (Shropshire/Worcestershire) ref1, ref2
Wyre river ref1, ref2
Wytham, Oxford ref1
Wytham Woods ref1
York ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6; map 4, map 7, map 9
Yorkshire ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11
Acknowledgements
The first intrepid readers of this book were, in chronological order: Margaret and Alison Robb, Natasha Fairweather and Melanie Jackson, my editors, Andrea Henry and Starling Lawrence, the infallible Nicholas Blake and the incomparable Camilla Elworthy. I am grateful to them all, as I am to Mary Mount, Lindsay Nash, Lewis Russell and Stuart Wilson at Picador, to Nneoma Amadiobi at Norton and Ivy Pottinger-Glass at Rogers, Coleridge & White. Dear friends past, present and within, named or unnamed, are or were, in order of acquaintance: Simon Phillips, Gerald Sgroi, S. D. Edwards, Paul Webb, Steve Blackburn, David Fawbert, Fiona Webb, Henry Johnson, John Harris, Jim Hiddleston, Stephen Roberts and Gill Coleridge.
About the Author
Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has published widely on French literature and history. His book The Discovery of France won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. For Parisians the City of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He lives on the English–Scottish border.
Also by Graham Robb
IN ENGLISH
Balzac
Victor Hugo
Rimbaud
Unlocking Mallarmé
Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century
The Discovery of France
Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
The Ancient Paths
Cols and Passes of the British Isles
The Debatable Land
France: An Adventure History
IN FRENCH
Baudelaire Lecteur de Balzac
La Poésie de Baudelaire et la Poésie Française
First published 2025 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-0350-2614-2
Copyright © Graham Robb 2025
Cover images by Getty Images.
Author photograph by Philippe Matsas.
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Lines from ‘MCMXIV’, by Philip Larkin, from The Whitsun Weddings. Copyright © 1964 by Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Limited. Lines from ‘Di Great Insohreckshan’ © Linton Kwesi Johnson, reproduced by kind permission of LKJ Music Publishers Ltd.
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Graham Robb, The Discovery of Britain
