For writer and academic Noreen Masud, flatlands have always been a source of fascination. From the wide, flat field glimpsed as a child from the back seat of her father's car in Lahore to more recent discoveries including the Cambridgeshire Fens and Morecambe Bay.
The silver sands revealed during a cross Bay walk made a lasting impression on her and together with experiences elsewhere she recounts her pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, in her book A Flat Place.
It's a fascinating consideration of memory, mind, painful histories and the breathtaking flatlands she has come to love.
While mountains are usually celebrated in literature and popular culture, Noreen prefers the quietening effect of flat landscapes.
Notes:
Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/noreen-masudUniversity of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her research covers all kinds of bases: flatness, spivs, puppets, leftovers, earworms, footnotes, rhymes, hymns, surprises, folk songs, colours, superstitions. She works mostly on twentieth-century literature, but also makes forays into Victorian and Romantic literature too.
