John Payne

Bath, Queen of the West, is internationally famous as one of England's oldest and most beautiful cities. The picturesque setting in the Avon valley, surrounded by green hills knit town and country together. The hot mineral springs welling up from deep within the earth have given it unique advantages as a health and leisure resort. The Romans called the city Aquae Sulis, and below the modern city are the important Roman Baths, one of England's top tourist attractions. In medieval times a great abbey grew up here, a centre of scholarship as well as religion. Bath was an important Cotswold weaving centre before becoming a great Georgian spa city. As taking the waters became an increasingly attractive leisure activity for visitors, a number of charity hospitals grew up around the hot springs. Then in the eighteenth century, great men such as Beau Nash the Master of Ceremonies and John Wood the architect transformed Bath into the grand Georgian city which we know today. Writers such as Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, and artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, settled in Bath. John Payne reflects on the diversity of the modern city, where industry, sport and shopping take their place alongside tourism and heritage. He considers the continuing importance of religious faith in the city and the contribution to Bath's cultural life made by its two universities and the many festivals, of which the winter Literature Festival and the springtime Bath International Music Festival are just two. Like all cities, Bath changes through time, and this book looks at recent developments such as the superb new spa centre, Thermae Bath Spa, and the modernist extension to the Holburne Museum of Fine Art. An insider account that goes beyond the well-trodden city centre, it includes Bath s attractive urban villages, such as Weston (a favourite walk of Jane Austen) and Combe Down with its stone quarries and Jewish burial ground.

The English West Country is a land of exceptional landscapes: many miles of wild, unspoilt coastline and vast expanses of wild moorland; great cities such as Exeter, Plymouth, Bath and Bristol; and market towns, villages and hamlets. On one level, the West Country is the most English of all English regions, home of clotted cream, thatch, church spires, folksong, hobby horses and Cecil Sharp. Yet the area was trading with Mediterranean Europe before the Romans. People lived in the West Country long before Britain, or England, were invented. From the great stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire to the menhirs of Cornwall, and the wealth of prehistoric remains on the Isles of Scilly, this has always been an inhabited landscape, crafted by men and women working closely with nature and natural forces. John Payne explores this culturally rich and varied region, revealing many facets of its distinctive and much-loved identity.