Britain is blessed with varied upland country: the rolling Malverns, vertiginous Snowdonia, the romantic peaks of the Lake District and the sub-Arctic tundra of the Cairngorms. Drawing on a lifetime of walking and climbing across Britain – and following an arc from the gentle Downs of southern England to the wild peaks of Scotland’s far north – Ian Crofton combines personal experiences with a keen curiosity about the history of mountain landscapes, the people who lived, worked, suffered and died in them, and those who have wandered through them.