'Theirs was a pre-urban world in the glow of its last sunset, without a care or doubt, in which it seemed as if nothing could ever come to harm. Here was their version of that ideal world that has haunted the dreamer, rebel and pastoral poet for centuries.' Between 1850 and 1939 such well-known writers as Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf and Richard Jefferies came to Sussex, a county already home to the likes of Wilfrid Blunt, Hilaire Belloc and others. The result was an explosion of literary creativity which rejected modernity and the London scene, and instead developed writing imbued with a sense of nature and landscape. In this, his last book, Peter Brandon (1927-2011) has drawn on his vast knowledge of the Sussex landscape to show how such writers, seeking a foil to London, were inspired by their surroundings and found peace and a tranquillity which existed in few other places.

The Sussex landscape is here celebrated by writers and poets, both famous and lesser-known, as we trace their search for rural peace and beauty in the tumultuous years 1850 to 1939. For the first time we trace the corpus of Sussex writing which was connected to those wider events but was equally a hymn of praise to rural Sussex, seen as nourishing, sympathetic and, for some, a retreat from the stresses of burgeoning city life or the horrors of mechanised warfare. We meet Wilfred Blunt and learn of his love for his Wealden countryside; we encounter the complex Hilaire Belloc; the acute observations of Richard Jefferies and Rudyard Kipling; and the modernity of Virginia Woolf. Lesser-known writers are included too, such as Charles Dalmon or Dr Habberton Lulham, who loved spending time with the downland shepherds or with travelling folk among the byways of the county.