Author(s): Francis Pryor

History

The Fens are a distinctive, complex, man-made and little understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked - and loved - the Fen Country for more than forty years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches, its magnificent medieval buildings.

In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fen landscape and its transformation - the great drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers, the Ouse Washes and Bedford Levels, the rise of prosperous towns and cities, such as King's Lynn, Cambridge, Wisbech, Boston and Spalding - with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

Interweaving personal experience, the graft and the grime of the dig, and lyrical evocations of place, Francis Pryor offers a unique portrait of a neglected by remarkable area of England.