Edge of England Landfall in Lincolnshire by Derek Turner

 I’ve been reading the ‘Edge of England Landfall in Lincolnshire’ by Derek Turner.  First published in 2022 but it just hadn’t come up on my radar before now.

To be fair these days when it comes to books I seem to be largely reliant on Amazon to tell me what they think I might like to read or, at least, be inclined to purchase from them.  This is a sorry state of affairs and I’m a long way from convinced that the Amazon algorithm has actually grasped what may or may not be of interest to me. This is probably down to my own rather eclectic ordering mix for myself and others.  So I may well only have myself to blame as to Amazon’s recommendations.  Perhaps more pertinently, it is years since I took a book out of the Library or even actually visited one come to that.  It is also some months since I visited an independent bookshop - that would be Heffers in Cambridge when we went to Ellis Brigham for an adjustment to S’s ski boots - and weeks since I wandered into Waterstones to waste some time ahead of an appointment, albeit pleasantly.

Still, it came up on my weekly recommended reading list from Amazon and I thought that my Dad might quite enjoy it.  Obviously either checking its publication date or whether he had actually read it would have been the sensible thing to do but I didn’t and it turned out both my parents had read it.  Some time ago.  Of course they had.  It has been out for 4 years and they will have been to the library and Waterstones pretty much every week since then together with their usual selection of secondhand/independent book shops and any others that they might come across from time to time.  This really was a rather basic error on my part.  

Anyway, I dragged myself away from doomscrolling for a few days and settled down to read it myself.  

Derek Turner, is clearly a man with a much more wide ranging vocabulary, in general usage, than I.  Who am I trying to kid - he has a much wider vocabulary than I do, full stop!  His bio on the inside front cover indicates that he has written for The Economist, The Spectator, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Irish Times, Country Life, Literary Review and The Lady.  Now I am no stranger to The Daily Mail online and unless I am very much mistaken the average sentence length, at some points, in this book is significantly longer than that appearing, as the norm, in The Daily Mail. 

It is also imparting quite some volume of information.  I had no idea about most of it even in respect of the South of the County where I have lived for over 50 years.  It is little short of fascinating and frankly revelatory that Lincolnshire could actually be that interesting, even if it is the second biggest county in the Country,

I foresee me dipping into this for quite sometime to come not least as a starting point for a spot of sightseeing closer to home than has previously been my norm.

That’s another load of stuff on to the ‘to do’ list then.   Thanks Derek!