Stratford-on-Avon is an excellent place to see the buildings of a late medieval and Georgian country town. The great medeival fortresses of Warwick and Kenilworth Castles are among the leading exemplars of their type. The superb range of country houses and landscaped gardens extends from the medieval perfection of Baddesley Clinton, and picturesque Compton Wynates to the eighteenth-century sophistication of Packington Hall. Birmingham and Coventry are major cathedral cities (though neither is anything like the conventional picture of an English cathedral). The nineteenth-century buildings of Birmingham, religious, civic and commercial, are outstanding in their quality and variety, while Coventry is one of the most imaginative examples of a twentieth-century city centre rebuilt after wartime destruction.

    The result is a book that will take you on an imaginative journey, revealing hidden stories, unexpected places and strange phenomena.From green men, ice-scratches, cross-legged knights and weathercocks to rainbows, clouds and stars; from place-names and poets to mazes, dene-holes and sham ruins, via avenues, dewponds and village greens, The Shell Country Alphabet will help you discover the world that remains, just off the motorway.'Geoffrey Grigson resurrected the minor, the provincial and the parochial ... [he was] an erudite and unrivalled topographer ... ardent in promoting informed awareness of the distinctiveness of place' Toby Barnard'An anthologist of genius' P.J. Kavanagh