And so there are many wells which, like Madron, are named now for the saints – but under their shallow surface ripples lie the deep, clear traces of far older stories.

a large annexe to her Gloucestershire house which conveys an overwhelming sense of clarity, of warm, light space and pale, restful furnishings. ‘It doesn’t look like an office on purpose,’ Polly tells me. ‘And that comes out of wanting to create my own intimate space, rather than a homogenised workspace. A place which can reflect the creativity and

I hadn’t burned my bridges, and so it was all too easy to play it safe, and to accept a job offer

The Eagle and the Raven, and it was a historical novel by a writer called Pauline Gedge.

The cultural narrative is the culture.

heroes is with service to and stewardship of the land.

This journey of ours, like all pilgrimages, is in some senses a journey out of time – a journey which takes us far beyond the ‘normal’ everyday world. It is a journey through the Otherworld, where the rules are incomprehensible, the tasks seem impossible, and the stakes are perilously high.

but I couldn’t imagine how. I couldn’t even picture a world in which it might be different: a world in which women were respected and in which we got to create the cultural narrative too;

Whatever it takes, whatever might be lost along the way, I need to cut myself loose from this increasingly meaningless life, and find another path.