vor Gurney is one of Gloucester’s famous sons, whose reputation as a poet and musician is steadily growing. This book introduces readers and walkers to the Gloucestershire places that inspired and grounded Gurney’s poetry.

Twenty circular walks follow his footsteps through the landscape, drawing on his poetry and letters to understand more about his experiences and creative activities. Specially commissioned hand-drawn maps and illustrations are provided to show each route, to identify the actual places revealed in his poems and to illuminate those historic, cultural and landscape features that defined it for Ivor Gurney.

Gurney’s childhood, roaming along the Severn riverside near Gloucester, was followed by explorations of the Cotswold Edge, youthful rambles with his friends Will Harvey and Herbert Howells, sailing on the River Severn and by his long and lonely walks on the scarp edge between Cleeve Hill and Cooper’s Hill 1918–22 after he returned from Flanders. Tracing Gurney’s footsteps makes it possible to recognise how the themes and language of his poetry echo his close relationship with these places.

The hand-drawn maps, illustrations and photographs make this an attractive guide – both to Ivor Gurney, the poet and to some of Gloucestershire’s most scenic and historic landscapes – for those who walk and for those who wish to travel from the comfort of their armchair.

Eleanor Rawling is a geographer, writer and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She is newsletter editor of the Ivor Gurney Society and has led numerous walks in Gurney’s Gloucestershire.

Paperback with flaps | 304 pages | 148 x 210 mm | Dec 2023
24 illustrated maps, c.100 colour photographs
ISBN 9781910839683

Logaston Walking Gloucestershire with Ivor Gurney