Books about where you live: Do they paint an accurate picture?

A short review of Tom Chesshyre’s Lost in the Lakes’

This book. 🤩 Oh yes! Right up my street — or, more accurately, my old stomping ground. I finished this over the weekend and loved it.

I’m not so sure that this cover (as lovely as it is) quite encapsulates the feel of this travelogue, because it’s not a prettified account. Of course, Chesshyre enjoys the stunning scenery, but he paints a picture of the Lakes that’s far more real and far less ‘chocolate box’. I like it very much. He meets fantastic people and occasional narky ones too, and he shows a Cumbria beyond Beatrix Potter’s depictions.

I wonder if a cover with people in it might have been more appropriate. Chesshyre certainly prioritised descriptions of people over peaks and lakes, and the line on the cover from Christopher Somerville of The Times has it right: “A carnival of characters.”

❓ Have you read travelogues of places you know well? Do you recognise the version painted by the travel writer?

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