Wiltshire, the largest landlocked county in England, is one of the country’s best-kept secrets.  The M4 motorway cuts a swathe through the north of the county, and the A303 does the same further south. Many of the motorists speeding along those two roads in their thousands each day drive through quite oblivious to the county’s many fascinating histories. There is much more to Wiltshire than just Stonehenge. It has been visited, and written about, by many of the greatest writers of the past centuries – John Aubrey, Daniel Defoe, Thomas Hardy,  William Wordsworth, Rider Haggard, Siegfried Sassoon and others – and it was the birthplace of Sir Chrisopher Wren.  Through a series of themed conversations – illustrated with his own photography – John Hannavy takes a fresh look at the county’s treasures and, with a nod to the author’s long career as a photographic historian, the final chapter explores Wiltshire’s role in the birth of photography through the pioneering work of  William Henry Fox Talbot at Lacock Abbey. Illustrated with 230 original  colour photographs.

This book will be published in Hardback by PiXZ/Halsgrove, and a companion volume In Search of Dorset is in preparation.