The Icknield Way with Jack Cornish

Event Information

We are thrilled to announce that we'll be hosting a very special Real Magic Walk and Talk on Sunday 1 March, celebrating the release of the brand new edition of The Icknield Way by Edward Thomas.

We be will welcoming writer Jack Cornish (author of The Lost Paths) who has written the introduction to the Little Toller Books edition. Jack will join us on the walk to read something from the book before we all head back to the shop for an in conversation event with big Edward Thomas fan and local author and poet Will Burns (The Paper Lantern).

‘The idea of the Icknield Way may conjure grandeur, but the way as experienced and described by Thomas is varied, beautiful and ordinary, and it is precisely its everyday, changeable nature which makes it so wonderful.’ Jack Cornish

In The Icknield Way, originally published in 1916, Edward Thomas walks one of the great ancient footpaths of England, The Icknield Way, which runs from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Suffolk, and connects to the Great Ridgeway, and has a claim to be one of Britain’s oldest roads. In startling and evocative prose, Thomas recounts the history of the path through the ages, tells us how it was established, the people who have used it and takes us on a journey through time and place. One of Thomas’ great prose works, republished alongside Little Toller’s editions of The South Country and In Pursuit of Spring.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was a poet and writer. Educated in London and at Oxford, for many years he was a writer of books about the countryside and a book reviewer, before finding success as a poet. In 1915 he enlisted in the army and was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917. Jack Cornish is the author of The Lost Paths, and is Director of England at The Ramblers, Britain’s walking charity.

Please note: full timings to follow but we'll be aiming to set off at around 10am, walk for a few hours and then back to the shop for the talk after lunch.