The Rising Down:
Lives in a Sussex Landscape
by Alexandra Harris
Faber, 512 pages, £25Faber, 512 pages, £25
“I followed paths so familiar that I knew where the puddles would be.” This is Alexandra Harris admitting, midway in her journey through life, that the best path took her back to West Sussex, where she was born and grew up.
Harris’s intention in returning to her birthplace was crystal clear: not only to celebrate the beauty of what she calls “a fairly obscure part of rural England”, but also to reawaken its past. And that is exactly what she does in this delightful book, deploying a variety of sources – from local customs and habits to record books and churches – in order to bring to life a cast of known and unknown characters who occupied or visited this area over the centuries.