Lakes and Moors: The Power of Northern Landscapes

The Matter of the North

Northern landscapes take centre stage in Episode Five as Melvyn Bragg celebrates the fells, lakes and moors that he loves. He meets mountaineer Chris Bonington in North Cumbria and goes on to see how, over the last 200 years the North has provided inspiration for great writers, some of the greatest in the language - Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Brontës - and painters, Ruskin and Turner. The landscape inspired Coleridge, and he came up with the word mountaineering and he's believed to be the first man to climb every peak in the Lake District. Melvyn visits the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth at Dove Cottage in the Lake District. The area around Coniston water was home to John Ruskin. The poet Ted Hughes, lived in Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire...and Melvyn says that it's impossible to think northern moorland without bringing to mind the way the Brontës have inscribed themselves on the landscape.

Contributors Professor Simon Bainbridge, Lancaster University Professor Sally Bushell, Lancaster University Chris Bonington Howard Hull, Brantwood, Ruskin's House Julian Cooper Simon Armitage Syima Aslam, Bradford Literature Festival Irna Qureshi, Bradford Literature Festival

Producer: Faith Lawrence.