Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain, by Amy Jeffs.

Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes. It begins between the Creation and Noah’s Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between the Britons, Saxons and Vikings, anc closes with the arrival of the Normans.

These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, inhabited with characters now half-remembered: Brutus, Albina, Scota, Arthur and Bladud among them, told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary. We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Wayland’s Smithy, from the archipelago of Orkney to as far as Snowdon and Loch Etive and rivers including the Ness, the Soar and the story-silted Thames in a vivid beautiful tale of our land steeped in myth.

It illuminates a collective memory that still informs the identity and political ambition associated with these places. In Storyland, Jeffs reimagines these myths of homeland, exile and migration, kinship, loyalty, betrayal, love and loss in a landscape brimming with wonder.