Graham Robb is an acclaimed historian and biographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize and the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize and Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. He lives on the English-Scottish border, and within a day’s ride of one hundred and seventy cols.

Also by the author

Balzac

Victor Hugo

Rimbaud

Unlocking Mallarmé

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century

The Discovery of France

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe

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First published by Particular Books 2016

First published in Penguin Books 2018

Copyright © Graham Robb, 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Maps and illustrations by Neil Gower

Book design by Richard Marston

Set in Quadraat and Quadraat Sans

Cover illustration: Neil Gower

ISBN: 978-1-846-14874-3

Contents

Prologue

Regions

Superlatives

The Catalogue

Introduction

England

Wales

Scotland

Northern Ireland

Republic of Ireland

References

Glossary

Acknowledgements

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Dedicated to the first person to cross all 2002 cols of the British Isles (without the aid of a car).