Alexandra Harris

The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape
In conversation with Sarah LeFanu

Starts at: Friday 25 October 4:30 PM
Finishes at: Friday 25 October 5:30 PM

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Returning to her childhood home in West Sussex, Alexandra Harris discovered a landscape that was not as familiar as she had imagined. In fact, she barely knew the place at all.

Now an eminent cultural historian, the adult Alexandra discovered that beneath every blade of grass lay hundreds of unexpected stories told by voices she had never previously heard.

Probing beneath the surface and excavating layers of archival records, she found fascinating pathways converging within a relatively small patch of England: a country estate parading a menagerie of exotic animals; a safe house harbouring secret agents from wartime French Resistance; the painter Constable, the writer Ford Madox Ford; an ancient church sheltering a medieval anchorite who chose to be buried alive.

This ‘World in a Grain of Sand’ reveals that nowhere is simply one place. Everywhere we find new bearings.

For Alexandra Harris's official website click here.