Stones of Britain

Jon Cannon has worked for ten years in the heritage industry, including for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, and English Heritage. In 2001 he was shortlisted for the David Watt Memorial Prize. He presented 'How to Build a Cathedral' on television for BBC4 as part of the medieval Britian series. He lives in Wiltshire.

I have read Jon's book with sustained delight. It is partially that his voice is so distinctive and so compelling. There are sentences that make you want to stand up and cheer. More fundamentally though, this is a strangely, even uniquely, personal engagement with stone - the very thing most of us consider to be impersonal, obdurate, resistant. The passages that describe Jon in the landscape are striking, so is the tactile engagement with stone, and the weaving together of built environment and mythopshere. This is a book in which the character of stone begins to acquire a life of its own. These stones speak. I will carry this with me as I might carry a bird book, to identify the ground beneath my feet. Like Jon himself, The Stones of Britain is full of charm and enthusiasm.