Landscapes of the Imagination – serie

The Alps are Europe's highest mountain range: their broad arc stretches right across the center of the continent, encompassing a wide range of traditions and cultures. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where early pioneers of tourism, mountaineering, and scientific research, along with the enduring legacies of historical regimes from the Romans to the Nazis, have all left their mark.

A garden at the foot of Europe and a crossroads between Spain, Africa and the New World, Andaluca has been a cultural customs house on the border of the Mediterranean and Atlantic civilisations for more than ten thousand years. This book traces its origins from the earliest hominid settlers in the Granada mountains 1.8 million years ago, through successive Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Muslim cultures, and the past five hundred years of modern Castilian rule, up to and including the present day of post-modern novelists in Crdoba and Sevilla, guerrilla urban archaeologists in Torremolinos and Marbella, and underground lo-fi bands in Granada and Mlaga.

Brittany's richly layered landscape has contributed depth and character to the region's traditional oral culture, from stories of the sea and shore to tales of misty moors, sacred hill-tops and secretive forests. Evangelizing Dark Age saints from Britain laid the foundations of Breton language and society, imposing Christianity on the landscape and in the minds of the people. Their legacy rests visually in the prolific spread of chapels, churches and cathedrals, and the Celtic language still preserved with pride. Right on the edge of Europe, the region has been vulnerable to assault and exploitation. Franks, Vikings, English, Germans have all made their mark, resisted at every turn with resilience. The problematic relationship with neighbouring France before and after Union in 1532 has left wounds to this day. The rapacity of the ancien regime was followed by deprivation of privileges during the Revolution, attacks on religion and subsequent suppression of the Breton language which struck at the very heart of Brittany. The nineteenth century combined economic stagnation with growing interest in Celtic roots, fuelling the search for that ultimate chimera - Breton identity.Historians and poets began to assert the distinct character of the region, while foreign travellers also left accounts of a people speaking an unfathomable language and appearing a race apart. This "primitivism" coupled with the lure of the mysterious megaliths created an image of wild exoticism, and made Brittany a prime target for tourists and artists. Today the past is perpetuated and the future welcomed in a packed festival calendar of Celtic music and Breton culture. Yet for all its modernity, Brittany remains as intensely complex and challenging to preconceived notions as ever. LANDSCAPE AND LEGENDS: Marches of Brittany; Druids and megaliths; St-Malo and sea adventures; mysteries of the Monts d'Arree; Merlin in the Foret de Broceliande. COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY: part of France yet a separate world; nationalism, regionalism, resistance, unity and division of language; four departments or five? WRITERS AND ARTISTS: Chaucer, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Ernest Renan, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Arthur de la Borderie, Mathurin Meheut, Max Jacob, Yves Tanguy.