I've just returned from a week's holiday in Dorset, having a break, but of course never far from the criss-cross paths of the Great War.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, I noticed some familiar names on local

war memorials in the area and also in a local museum I found reference to the Dorset Mansell

Pladel family noted for their pioneering geological and archaeological work in the county

and a family that lost several young men in the Great War,

including two on the Somme in 1916, both of whom whose graves I visited. But I did what I usually do

on holiday, and that was to bring a few books related to nature and landscape with me to read,

rather than those on conflict,

and so found myself enthralled with a new book, The Tattooed Hills by John Walcott, only just published.

Landscape is such a big part of this podcast, as those who listen to it will know the importance of landscape in terms of the fighting,

the battles on that ground, and how it often influenced the outcome of that fighting.

But much more than this, really, as well.

The very meaning of landscape is all part of our understanding of that old front line.

And by that, I guess, what it meant to fight and shed blood on the rolling chalk downlands

of the Somme 110 years ago, what was in the mind and the hearts of soldiers

when they thought of what Britain meant to them during that fighting,

a theme that we explored quite recently with Professor Mark Connolly in the podcast

on chalk, Englishness and the Great War. John Walcott's excellent and fascinating book

follows the chalk figures cut into that landscape of the past and seeks to find out what they

mean in the world of today. It mixes history with folklore, archaeology, with identity, and so much more.

And while the majority of these chalk figures are centuries old,

perhaps the oldest being the Uffington Horse, cut into the Oxfordshire Hills,

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