Common Ground

Ali Smith finds the modern landscape still suggests the other-worldly creatures she used to read about in folk tales. Niall Griffiths laments the clumsy tributes to Dylan Thomas that cover every available surface in Laugharne. Virginia Woolf's Orlando might seem to be standing beside you in the unchanged parkland around Knole. How does Jaspar Fforde's alternative Swindon compare with our comparatively prosaic version? And who would have thought the M40 such a rich seam for Will Self?Every writer contributing to this amazing tour of literary Britain continues to be inspired by the writers who lived in their region. They find, whether or not the landscape is changed, some common ground with them.