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Ross Balzaretti discusses his work on Frederic Lees, a piece written from memory during the covid-19 lockdown, about a place he had previously visited, ‘accompanied’ by an historical traveler who published an account of the same place.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 11, 2023

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This video video is a detailed discussion about a travel writing chapter contributed by the speaker, prompted by requests from a former PhD student, David Robinson, who co-edited a book titled *Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine*. The chapter focuses on the travel writer Frederick Lease, known for his eccentric character and extensive writings on France and Italy in the early 20th century. Lease's book *Wanderings on the Italian Riviera*, published in 1912, documented his journey through the Liguria region, emphasizing his preference for walking and exploring areas off the tourist path.

The speaker reflects on the significance of Lease's work, highlighting its originality as one of the first detailed accounts of Liguria in English, along with its rich cultural context that includes the impact of modernity and landscape changes over time. The discussion also depicts the contrast between Lease's extensive single visit and the speaker's own shorter, repetitive travels to the same region over the years.

Furthermore, it touches on themes of sustainable tourism and the evolving nature of travel, comparing historical perspectives with contemporary experiences, particularly in light of restrictions experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The speaker believes that revisiting historical travel narratives like Lease’s can offer insights into present landscapes and inform future travel practices, revealing connections between the past and present while emphasizing the importance of understanding both cultural and environmental changes in travel contexts.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I was asked by a former PhD student

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of mine, David Robinson.

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So I felt as though I couldn't say no.

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And he's very good at twisting people's arms.

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So he actually had the idea

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for the book in which this chapter was published,

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which was eventually called Travel Writing in an Age

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of Global Quarantine.

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It was published last year,

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and he, he co-edited it with Gary Fisher.

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So I'm very proud of the book

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because it's one of the PhD students who's actually,

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you know, published an actual book, which is great.

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Um, and his PhD was about trouble writing, so

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that's why he was interested in it.

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And I, I co supervised it

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with colleague called on August at Not,

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and he was doing a comparison between India and Italy

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and travelers to those places in the 19th century,

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which had not been done before, really.

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Anyway, he asked contributors during lockdown

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because we couldn't physically travel anymore.

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He came up with this idea that we would travel, as it were,

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virtually through a, through through with a traveler

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who traveled before to a place

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that we knew ourselves well and had traveled to.

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So that was a sort of, you know, the, the, the remit really.

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And so I thought, I thought about

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it for a bit and said, yeah, I'll agree.

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And I, and I decided to choose Frederick Lease.

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Now Frederick Lease was strange.

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He was quite eccentric, very interesting character.

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For example, he published an article in something called The

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Strand Magazine, which was a sort of literary review

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of the late 19th century.

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Um, may still be published,

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but I'm not sure, about being down and out in Paris long

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before George Orwell wrote it actually.

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So he was quite quirky.

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Anyway, his main interest in life was France

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and he knew a lot about France and he traveled there a lot

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and he wrote a lot about it.

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So he was one of the, the main figures actually,

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although Ron forgotten, but he was an important figure in

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transmitting French culture to England at the

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turn of the 20th century.

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He did a lot of publication the first time,

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and the only time he went to Italy, he went to Legia.

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So he crossed the, the French Italian border in 1910.

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And he spent about a year and a half there.

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And at one point he did a, a formal tour.

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He traveled for three months, a walking tour

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of the whole region, which is the region that of Liguria,

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which borders the Mediterranean with the capital at Genoa.

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Um, quite well known to travelers still,

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less than it was in the 19th century.

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So he, he does this travel from west

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to east across the whole region on foot.

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He walks, not by himself, but he goes with a companion.

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So in a sense, that was quite a good subject for, for a,

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a relatively short book chapter.

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It's quite an attractive subject, you know, there's lots

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of things that he saw and did.

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I've known about this book.

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So I was asked to do it, is the short answer.

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But the longer answer is,

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I've known about this book since the mid 1990s.

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I bought a copy when it was not digitized, when it was not

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In any British libraries that I could find.

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So I had to buy a secondhand copy.

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Um, and I was did it

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because I was teaching third years undergraduate students

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at, at Martin University on a course called The

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Landscape History of Legia.

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And we still do that 25 more, 25 years later.

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And we have a week long trip to this small town of Rezi,

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which is what, I did this chapter about.

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And, the reason I knew about the book is we were,

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in those days, we were always searching for things

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for the students to read in English.

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'cause there was almost nothing. So,

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there's much more now, some of it by me

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and colleagues at, not even in other places,

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but, so that's really the, the answers I was asked to do it

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and I wanted to do it.

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'cause I, I like Frederick Lee,

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I'm quite attracted to him as a person.

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I'm attracted to the subject. And I knew

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about the place he went to.

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And I, from a different, different perspective.

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You could take a very broad context,

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and I will, so people,

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people may know there's something called the Grand

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Tour of Europe.

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So in the 18th and well, from the 16th,

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mid 16th century onwards, really aristocrats

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and their children would travel to become educated.

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They traveled from Britain to the mainland of Europe.

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Other, other Europeans did it within

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Europe and some came to Britain.

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But much of the traffic, as it were, was from Britain

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to places like Italy, particularly Italy actually,

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which was regarded as sort of a focus

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of culture in this, in this period.

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Um, and we could go into that,

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but there's time in some respects though,

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that grand tour continued into the 19th

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century, but it changed.

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So it was much shorter in the, in the original form,

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people would travel for a year or two

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and they wouldn't come back to Britain.

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So they'd go, they'd basically emigrate for two years.

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But in the 19th century, they tended to go for a couple

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of months or maybe a few weeks as train travel became easier

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and all this sort of thing, it became easier to go quickly.

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And that's what happened.

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Different sorts of people traveled.

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So it was middle class people really,

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I suppose we would say them say aristocrats still travel,

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but they tried to keep it low key.

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They weren't very prominent anymore.

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And towards the end of the 19th century, you get

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what we might term working class, working class people,

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traveling on organized tourist trips,

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what we would call package tours now.

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And which started in the sort of middle of the 19th century.

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So that's the broad context.

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But lease very definitely did not

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regard himself as a tourist.

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He was a traveler, a much more superior sort of,

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and there are still such people, of course,

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who looked down upon tourists.

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In fact, we all do it to a bit.

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We, we may all be tourists, but when we go

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abroad, we try not to pretend.

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We try, but not to be. Um, so this book, which he,

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I based my chapter on called Wanderings on the Italian

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Riviera, which he published in 1912, was a book written

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for people like him, for fellow travelers

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who deliberately went to use a popular phrase at

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that time off the beaten track.

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So they deliberately tried to go

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where the tourists didn't go.

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Now, in li there was a good reason for doing that

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because in the nine, by the middle of the 19th century,

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it was full of British people.

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They were everywhere on the coast.

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Places like Samma, bor, Guera, Elaia,

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they generally went there in the winter, not in the summer

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as we would go now, because the climate was mild

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and it, the air was cleaner than in Britain,

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where the big industrial cities were very polluted.

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And Genoa had not been developed by the middle

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of the 19th century in that way.

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It was a bit later. So they went for their health

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and they went for pleasure trips

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and a whole infrastructure developed English speaking

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hotels, serving dreadful English food, English churches,

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doctors, chemists, tennis courts, a whole lot.

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It was like little England transplanted to the coast,

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but not to the interior.

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So there were lots of guidebooks to service that sort

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of industry, which is what it became.

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There were, there were tens of thousands

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of people going every year.

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And by the end of the 19th century, well by in fact 1911,

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there was something like

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6 million tourists going a year.

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So it was, it changed a lot.

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It was big, but they didn't go into the interior.

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So that gave Lisa a space to write a book about.

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He does write about the coast,

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but he also writes about the interior.

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So there's lots of market for, there's a market for it,

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lots of books in English.

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Uh, there's a reading public for it.

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So he's contributing to an established genre type

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of writing, travel writing, and for practice of travel.

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'cause he's traveling himself. He's a traveler,

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but he does it with a twist.

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He walks everywhere. Most tourists didn't do that.

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He did that deliberately.

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That was fashionable with a certain sort

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of slightly alternative person.

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In the beginning of the 20th century.

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There was a sort of fad as it were for walking.

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When you traveled, it was quite hard work too.

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So he walks, that's why it took him three months.

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He walked the whole province up

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and down the valleys and everywhere.

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But also he went inland to places where outsiders,

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not just tourists, but any outsiders, rarely went.

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So he goes to small villages up in the hills.

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The guru is quite mountainous,

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it's aine chain, it's quite mountainous.

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He goes to the remote inland valleys.

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Some of those places were not

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and are still not connected by rail transport.

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So Vera's illegal does never had the railway.

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So, so it's not that changed in some ways

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to when lease went there.

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So it made quite an interesting comparison.

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So that's the broad, broad context.

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Well, first of all, the fact

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that he traveled across a whole region systematically,

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which wasn't often done actually.

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And, and, and I, I thought about that this morning,

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having written this chapter.

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It's interesting when you do things again.

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I didn't actually say that in the chapter,

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I don't think, which is interesting.

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So thank you for asking me to do this.

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It's made me revisit it again.

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But he did it a sort of systematic walking tour

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and he wrote it all down.

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And that was new in English.

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Italians had done it before, actually,

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but I don't think he knew,

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I don't think he could read Italian, actually.

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I think he wrote very, he was very fluent in French,

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but I'm not sure he could read Italian.

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I think he did have a bit of go at speaking

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it, but I'm not sure.

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So it was new in English.

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Certainly there'd never been a book on

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this topic in English before.

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And when I discovered it existed,

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and I, I bought my copy from Australia,

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it was flown over from Australia in the 1990s.

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I was very excited 'cause I'd never seen it.

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I didn't know what it was going to contain.

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And then when he actually went to a place I knew,

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which nobody else knew had ever been

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there, I couldn't believe it.

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And there were photographs of it, it was quite interesting.

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So the fact that he travels across a whole region and

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and documented it is unusual.

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The fact that he photographed it by himself.

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And he could only really do that from about

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1890s onwards when these small cameras

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became available commercially.

09:35.885 --> 09:38.945
So I think he published in the book there were 60 black

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and white photographs, which he took himself.

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I think he used one of these small mass produced cameras,

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perhaps Kodak, they were available then.

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Not sure. He doesn't tell us.

09:47.365 --> 09:48.465
But they're, they're useful

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because for many of the places that he photographs,

09:52.605 --> 09:54.865
it was the first time a foreigner had taken a

09:54.865 --> 09:56.105
photograph and published it.

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So he was, he was actually, he was doing something

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that was new to the public.

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They'd never seen these places before.

10:03.645 --> 10:05.505
And, and when I'm teaching this topic, which I used

10:05.505 --> 10:08.505
to do quite a lot, I tried to get across the students,

10:08.565 --> 10:10.945
the fact that when somebody traveled in the past,

10:11.015 --> 10:12.425
they didn't know where they were going.

10:12.925 --> 10:14.905
If they'd not been there before, they'd never seen it

10:14.905 --> 10:16.065
before, you know.

10:16.685 --> 10:19.625
And so the fact that these travel books in the beginning

10:19.625 --> 10:22.385
of the 20th century become much more illustrated was really

10:22.385 --> 10:25.665
quite important in, in demonstrating knowledge.

10:25.765 --> 10:29.145
Now, some of the places he photographed, for example,

10:29.415 --> 10:31.585
include a place called Bussa Veia,

10:31.585 --> 10:33.625
which is on the western Riviera inland,

10:34.035 --> 10:36.825
which was completely destroyed by an earthquake,

10:37.275 --> 10:40.265
which he records happened at 6:25 AM on the

10:40.265 --> 10:41.745
23rd of February, 1887.

10:42.085 --> 10:44.745
And it did, you can read the scientific reports,

10:45.355 --> 10:46.625
which were made at the time.

10:47.685 --> 10:49.865
The village population was entirely wiped out.

10:50.635 --> 10:54.375
Lease photographed the cemetery, very Victorian thing to do.

10:54.605 --> 10:56.615
They were obsessed with cemeteries.

10:57.035 --> 11:00.615
And the village was rebuilt lower down the slope called Sana

11:00.725 --> 11:02.535
Nova, the new Sana

11:03.355 --> 11:06.495
and Lease said it was terribly ugly, nothing like as pretty

11:06.515 --> 11:07.535
as the old, old place.

11:07.835 --> 11:09.335
So he's made, he's quite good at,

11:09.675 --> 11:11.575
if you're interested in sort of cultural attitudes

11:11.575 --> 11:12.895
to modernity, he's quite good.

11:14.195 --> 11:18.215
Um, and then the fact that they illustrated the fact

11:18.215 --> 11:20.495
that he illustrated his books with photographs rather than

11:20.925 --> 11:23.695
expensive color plates of paintings

11:23.815 --> 11:27.015
and drawings, which many travel books in the late

11:27.015 --> 11:28.295
19th century used.

11:28.755 --> 11:31.335
And therefore they were more expensive and more costly

11:31.595 --> 11:32.975
and it restricted the public.

11:33.165 --> 11:35.695
Whereas by the, the, the, by 1911

11:36.265 --> 11:37.695
there was a more popular market

11:37.975 --> 11:39.895
'cause the books were cheaper because photography

11:39.895 --> 11:42.735
ironically, although it was quite relatively new, had been

11:42.735 --> 11:44.535
around for 70 years or whatever,

11:44.955 --> 11:47.535
but in its reproducible form, fairly new,

11:47.915 --> 11:48.935
made it cheaper.

11:49.395 --> 11:51.255
And now most importantly,

11:51.255 --> 11:55.325
however, he recorded places as he saw them.

11:56.705 --> 11:58.885
Now, of course, he's a writer, you know, one

11:58.885 --> 12:00.325
of his favorite authors was Dickens,

12:00.325 --> 12:01.365
who was also a traveler.

12:01.515 --> 12:04.645
There's lots of debates amongst academics as

12:04.645 --> 12:06.845
to whether travel writing is a fictional form

12:07.305 --> 12:08.365
or whether it isn't.

12:08.985 --> 12:11.685
And yeah, I can see, I can see the argument in favor

12:11.725 --> 12:13.325
of the fictional form, but lease wasn't.

12:13.625 --> 12:15.045
And yes, he's writing a story.

12:15.185 --> 12:17.405
He tells a narrative of his trip

12:18.145 --> 12:19.725
and he elaborates on things,

12:20.425 --> 12:22.485
but he tries to find out as it were,

12:22.715 --> 12:23.805
what it was really like.

12:24.025 --> 12:25.925
He takes photographs, he walks the land,

12:26.105 --> 12:30.005
he describes it in detail, he talks to local people, he goes

12:30.105 --> 12:32.245
to archives and tries to get documents.

12:32.265 --> 12:35.445
So he, he's a, he's, he's quite an educated traveler

12:35.445 --> 12:36.565
and he's doing a specific thing.

12:36.565 --> 12:38.005
He's trying to describe it as it was.

12:38.665 --> 12:41.725
He describes it often in great detail. The landscapes.

12:42.025 --> 12:44.405
He describes the people and what the work they were doing.

12:44.865 --> 12:46.405
He describes castles

12:46.405 --> 12:49.885
and parises, fairly standard thing for travel writers to do.

12:50.185 --> 12:51.245
But some of the causes

12:51.245 --> 12:54.085
and palaces have never been visited by foreigners as far

12:54.085 --> 12:55.765
as we know, at least not written about.

12:56.225 --> 12:58.365
But interestingly, because of the time he was writing,

12:58.465 --> 13:00.285
he also engages with modernity.

13:00.705 --> 13:02.525
He describes the railway where it existed.

13:02.585 --> 13:03.725
He describes factories.

13:04.345 --> 13:07.725
He talks in one case about gigantic villas

13:07.765 --> 13:11.365
that are being built by gen ese, business people in the land

13:11.425 --> 13:14.525
to get away from the tourists so they can go on holiday

13:14.985 --> 13:16.525
to their own properties in land.

13:16.525 --> 13:18.365
And that's a a, a development

13:18.365 --> 13:19.805
that still goes on today, of course.

13:20.225 --> 13:23.405
So in one sense it's, it's quite, it's quite complicated.

13:23.715 --> 13:27.445
He's described what we might call a lost world, right?

13:27.985 --> 13:29.925
But he's all, but it's also one outta which

13:29.925 --> 13:31.365
that currently gear emerges.

13:31.365 --> 13:34.765
And we can see that by comparing my own travel experience,

13:34.765 --> 13:38.685
for example, with his lease made a single extended visit.

13:38.785 --> 13:39.965
But he did it only once.

13:40.105 --> 13:42.005
And it was his first and only trip to Italy.

13:42.185 --> 13:43.365
He was a French expert.

13:43.825 --> 13:46.525
He wrote books about shatters in the Lair

13:46.525 --> 13:48.245
Valley history of art.

13:48.905 --> 13:50.845
Um, as I said, he's a very interesting character.

13:50.845 --> 13:53.405
He, he's the first person to write about yogurt in English

13:53.425 --> 13:54.485
as far as I can tell.

13:54.875 --> 13:57.605
He's very strange. Um, but interesting, right?

13:58.065 --> 14:00.765
Um, so he, he had a, a single

14:00.865 --> 14:02.405
but quite rich experience of

14:02.405 --> 14:04.165
that particular region in Italy.

14:04.165 --> 14:05.365
And that was it. As far as I know,

14:05.565 --> 14:06.445
I don't think he ever went there

14:06.445 --> 14:07.885
again or have been there before.

14:08.515 --> 14:10.285
I've been going to Italy since I was a child.

14:10.385 --> 14:12.285
My father was Italian. I have a sort

14:12.285 --> 14:14.085
of Italian focus to my research.

14:14.945 --> 14:18.645
Um, but in terms of Legia, I have made only short,

14:18.815 --> 14:21.085
relatively short trips, week

14:21.225 --> 14:24.005
or fortnight, maybe three weeks, perhaps the longest

14:25.045 --> 14:27.725
annually to, particularly to Reza,

14:28.205 --> 14:29.965
where I took students on a field trip

14:29.965 --> 14:31.125
with colleagues from Moham.

14:31.125 --> 14:34.925
And we spent an intensive period of a week working there

14:35.385 --> 14:36.645
and visiting the local coast.

14:36.795 --> 14:39.205
More famous places like a Tula Andante

14:39.205 --> 14:41.165
or Portofino or Genoa.

14:41.555 --> 14:42.725
I've been doing those trips on

14:42.725 --> 14:45.045
and off mostly every year for 25 years.

14:45.105 --> 14:48.085
So I've got quite a, an extended period of time compared

14:48.085 --> 14:50.965
to least, but a very more, a much more narrow focus.

14:51.605 --> 14:53.645
I don't know the Western Riviera personally

14:53.645 --> 14:54.685
particularly well.

14:54.875 --> 14:57.205
Whereas Lease did know much better.

14:57.345 --> 14:59.085
So it, it's, you know, it's, it's,

14:59.195 --> 15:00.565
it's the comparison's.

15:00.685 --> 15:02.765
Interesting. We've both, of course written about the area,

15:03.745 --> 15:05.645
but I'm an aca I'm a professional academic.

15:05.705 --> 15:07.845
So I've written books about

15:08.455 --> 15:10.325
legia more widely at other periods.

15:10.325 --> 15:14.685
I wrote a book about Dark Age area as it was called in 2013.

15:14.785 --> 15:17.245
So looking at ancient history of that area,

15:17.665 --> 15:20.605
and I'm writing for academic audiences, whereas lease writes

15:20.605 --> 15:23.245
for sort of educated travelers, really of his period,

15:23.245 --> 15:25.805
including what were known as fireside travelers,

15:26.135 --> 15:28.045
which is an interesting concept.

15:28.315 --> 15:30.565
It's a, it's a Victorian phrase for those

15:30.565 --> 15:31.845
who sort of traveled virtually.

15:31.845 --> 15:33.965
They never left their home, but they read these books,

15:34.275 --> 15:35.685
they looked at pictures of the places

15:35.825 --> 15:39.005
and they experienced travel like we do on the internet,

15:39.005 --> 15:42.085
really, you know, we often, so it's quite interesting.

15:42.105 --> 15:46.445
So Elise was very good. Uh, he published a lot of books.

15:46.725 --> 15:48.925
I can't remember the number, but it's, it's, it's,

15:49.345 --> 15:51.245
30 or 40.

15:51.345 --> 15:53.805
He was quite a prolific writer and he made a career outta it

15:54.385 --> 15:56.285
and he was trying to reach a particular audience.

15:56.485 --> 15:58.165
I, of course, I'm an academic

15:58.185 --> 15:59.645
and I tend to write for a fairly,

16:00.725 --> 16:01.925
a relatively narrow audience.

16:02.025 --> 16:04.365
But in this essay I tried to, I was asked to,

16:04.655 --> 16:06.965
we've all asked to by the editors to try

16:06.965 --> 16:08.205
and reach out beyond academia

16:09.105 --> 16:11.205
to an audience written interested,

16:11.235 --> 16:12.645
more interested in trouble more generally.

16:12.705 --> 16:15.405
So I think I can begin to see what Lease was trying to do.

16:15.685 --> 16:17.045
'cause I've tried to do a little bit of it myself.

16:17.115 --> 16:19.005
Another reason why Lease was a good example,

16:19.005 --> 16:22.935
because in fact, I don't know

16:22.935 --> 16:25.535
how much research he did before he went to Ligeia,

16:25.535 --> 16:27.335
but there were hundreds of travel books he could have

16:27.335 --> 16:28.535
read before he went.

16:29.035 --> 16:30.815
Um, but I don't think he did much actually,

16:30.815 --> 16:32.495
because he had a guide, he had a local guide

16:32.795 --> 16:35.255
who he names he only gives the initials of the guide.

16:35.255 --> 16:38.135
So we dunno actually who it was. But he was an antiquarian.

16:38.135 --> 16:41.855
So he was a local expert and he walked, not all of the tour,

16:41.855 --> 16:45.775
but about three quarters of it with lease and,

16:45.875 --> 16:48.055
and sort of edgy, you know, told him about the landscape.

16:48.055 --> 16:49.215
So he, he does it in a different way.

16:49.215 --> 16:50.495
He's got a, he's got this sort of guy,

16:50.495 --> 16:52.775
but it's a bit like in 18th century there's more

16:52.775 --> 16:55.335
of this sort of work, which I'm gonna talk about now going

16:55.355 --> 16:56.935
on now than there has been for a long time.

16:57.155 --> 17:01.935
So, for example, a book like this is interesting

17:01.935 --> 17:04.855
for the history of past landscapes and,

17:04.955 --> 17:07.695
and in Liguria we have some interesting issues there.

17:07.805 --> 17:09.775
It's a, it's quite an unstable reason.

17:10.535 --> 17:12.495
A region, sorry, geologically.

17:13.235 --> 17:15.015
So it's got short, it's got these short,

17:15.125 --> 17:18.735
very steep sided mountain valleys, which can find the rivers

17:18.955 --> 17:20.615
and they go rapidly to the coast.

17:21.445 --> 17:23.055
This causes flooding.

17:24.075 --> 17:28.615
And over recent decades, particularly in 2011, for example,

17:29.075 --> 17:31.935
and more recently there have been major floods in the area,

17:31.935 --> 17:33.735
which of course considerable loss of life

17:34.115 --> 17:36.335
and millions of euros of damage.

17:37.315 --> 17:41.295
And quite obviously the local people are concerned to try

17:41.295 --> 17:43.615
and find out what's going on and how to stop it.

17:44.685 --> 17:48.895
Looking back at this sort of writing, we can understand

17:49.715 --> 17:50.715
What has been lost. So

17:50.715 --> 17:54.185
when I talked about sort of lost landscapes,

17:55.245 --> 18:00.025
the lease is recording right at the end really of a, a,

18:00.185 --> 18:02.145
a, what we might call a traditional management

18:02.145 --> 18:04.305
of the landscape agricultural management that had gone on

18:04.305 --> 18:06.185
for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

18:06.925 --> 18:09.225
So traditional farm management by people

18:09.245 --> 18:12.545
and their animals out in the fields, you know,

18:12.565 --> 18:16.185
up in the woods managing the land has almost entirely

18:16.185 --> 18:17.785
disappeared in that region.

18:17.805 --> 18:18.905
Almost completely gone.

18:19.565 --> 18:23.385
So the land has reverted to nature, complicated topic.

18:24.175 --> 18:25.705
It's become forested.

18:26.335 --> 18:31.105
It's being veiled with wolves, for example, possibly bears

18:31.105 --> 18:32.305
that they're thinking of introducing.

18:32.305 --> 18:33.385
But this is happening naturally.

18:33.385 --> 18:34.665
The wolves came there by themselves.

18:35.565 --> 18:37.665
So there's been a huge change in

18:37.685 --> 18:40.505
how the interior has been managed in the last hundred

18:41.325 --> 18:42.465
so or so years.

18:43.165 --> 18:45.465
But on the coast, the change is even more shocking

18:45.665 --> 18:46.705
'cause there's been massive building

18:46.845 --> 18:49.945
of tourist infrastructure, hotels, apartment blocks,

18:50.305 --> 18:51.505
restaurants everywhere, right?

18:51.645 --> 18:52.825
The railway, all the rest it.

18:53.445 --> 18:55.785
And that has, now obviously there's a,

18:55.785 --> 18:57.465
there is climate change, it's definitely happening

18:57.465 --> 18:58.465
and it's, it's partly

18:58.465 --> 19:00.985
behind the massive rainfall which causes these flood events.

19:01.365 --> 19:04.025
But what people have done to the landscape has helped

19:04.085 --> 19:05.465
to encourage it, right?

19:06.125 --> 19:08.985
And so we can look back at what the landscape was like

19:09.405 --> 19:12.505
and we can think about can we revert to some of it?

19:13.125 --> 19:15.425
Can we learn as it were from

19:15.855 --> 19:17.465
what these old books are telling us?

19:17.565 --> 19:19.545
And in another book, which I

19:20.305 --> 19:23.545
co-wrote called Rediscovering Lost Landscapes,

19:23.545 --> 19:27.265
which was largely based on Legia in 2021.

19:27.885 --> 19:30.825
And it used artistic representations

19:30.825 --> 19:32.705
of the landscape at different periods

19:33.045 --> 19:34.105
to show how it's changed.

19:34.995 --> 19:36.745
There were all sorts of issues with art, you know,

19:36.745 --> 19:37.785
artists creative and all.

19:38.405 --> 19:39.665
But we also used photography.

19:39.725 --> 19:41.785
We incorporated some of Lisa's photography.

19:41.785 --> 19:44.865
So when I say we, that's Charles Watkins, who's professor

19:44.865 --> 19:48.025
of Google Geography at nsm and, and our PhD student

19:48.085 --> 19:51.225
and research fellow Tropi, who is from Genoa

19:52.205 --> 19:54.425
and he's now working at Genoa.

19:54.425 --> 19:57.625
He did his PhD at NSM on artist travelers to n and the 18th

19:57.625 --> 19:58.865
and early 19th centuries.

19:59.445 --> 20:02.145
But now he works in geography at general university,

20:02.545 --> 20:04.105
collaborating with local scientists

20:04.105 --> 20:07.545
and engineers to try to look at the local histories

20:07.545 --> 20:11.385
of flooding, using written sources, using visual sources,

20:11.525 --> 20:14.385
but also the more scientific stuff to try

20:14.385 --> 20:17.265
to inform policy makers in the local region

20:17.365 --> 20:20.385
and beyond about how we might deal with that issue.

20:20.405 --> 20:21.825
So there's a good example I think,

20:22.125 --> 20:23.625
and how we might sort out the problem

20:24.125 --> 20:26.705
and that that's a good place to sort of wind up really,

20:26.705 --> 20:31.445
which is that although looking at a single book, you know,

20:31.505 --> 20:34.005
by a sort of humanities store like me, looks as though it's

20:34.585 --> 20:37.205
pie in the sky, you know, ivory tower academia.

20:37.265 --> 20:39.085
So it does to many people in this country,

20:39.085 --> 20:41.085
certainly we get it in our media a lot.

20:41.955 --> 20:44.445
It's not the, it it is actually very relevant

20:44.505 --> 20:46.805
and we can see that these, these cross

20:47.885 --> 20:50.165
collaborations which are being encouraged by the people

20:50.165 --> 20:51.725
who fund research quite rightly,

20:51.845 --> 20:53.365
I think are being encouraged.

20:53.985 --> 20:55.885
And they are, they are helping

20:55.985 --> 20:57.845
to answer real world problems now.

20:57.925 --> 20:59.805
I think. So. So it's, it's,

20:59.825 --> 21:02.925
it seems like quite a stretch from a book written in 1911

21:03.025 --> 21:05.005
to now, but I don't think it is that much

21:05.005 --> 21:06.725
of a stretch actually, particularly

21:06.725 --> 21:08.685
as it's not the only book, you know, there are others,

21:08.745 --> 21:10.405
but, it's one of the more interesting ones.

21:10.425 --> 21:14.125
But, you know, so I think I,

21:14.245 --> 21:15.805
I could probably talk about other implications,

21:15.825 --> 21:18.375
but I think that's the main one really.

21:18.595 --> 21:20.655
The other thing of course is interesting about it is it does

21:20.655 --> 21:22.015
tell us about the history of travel.

21:22.635 --> 21:26.215
We travel a lot. I think a lot of people during lockdown,

21:26.215 --> 21:27.455
which provoked that book

21:27.455 --> 21:31.175
and that essay did feel as though they were constrained

21:31.635 --> 21:33.695
and couldn't, well you literally couldn't go out the front

21:33.695 --> 21:35.335
door some of the time, but, you know,

21:35.395 --> 21:37.255
you certainly couldn't travel long distances.

21:37.255 --> 21:38.455
And I think some, I think that did

21:38.455 --> 21:39.495
affect people quite a lot.

21:40.195 --> 21:42.295
Um, and we were only now realizing it how

21:42.295 --> 21:43.535
that affected many people.

21:44.475 --> 21:48.985
And, you know, the, the, the revival

21:49.005 --> 21:51.065
of the travel and tourist market has been

21:51.065 --> 21:52.145
quite slow actually.

21:52.145 --> 21:54.225
It's almost where people were sort of stunned by it

21:54.225 --> 21:56.145
and they, they thought, well, should we travel again

21:56.145 --> 21:57.345
or what or how are we gonna do that?

21:57.845 --> 21:59.145
And I think it's quite interesting to,

21:59.165 --> 22:01.145
to look at the long history of travel

22:01.205 --> 22:02.705
and see that we as travelers

22:02.705 --> 22:05.665
and tourists are in a long line of people who've done it

22:05.665 --> 22:07.705
for centuries and centuries of whom lease is just won.

22:07.965 --> 22:09.905
And then we can have these little snapshots at moments

22:10.045 --> 22:11.705
to see, see and,

22:11.725 --> 22:13.825
and you know, somewhere like Bere,

22:13.915 --> 22:16.265
which I haven't talked a lot about, which I've been to,

22:16.265 --> 22:18.345
I know quite well is interesting

22:18.345 --> 22:20.225
because the railway didn't go there.

22:20.575 --> 22:22.745
It's quite like it was in Lisa's day.

22:23.125 --> 22:24.625
So there are, there's a photograph,

22:24.635 --> 22:26.145
there are two photographs in his book,

22:26.145 --> 22:27.745
and you could take the same photograph today

22:27.885 --> 22:29.145
and it would look virtually the same.

22:30.485 --> 22:32.385
So it does show that some places

22:33.245 --> 22:34.665
in Li area have not changed.

22:34.805 --> 22:36.105
Uh, obviously been changes,

22:36.205 --> 22:39.265
but you know, they haven't changed as much as others.

22:40.565 --> 22:43.985
And is that a lesson that we need to think about in terms

22:43.985 --> 22:46.425
of sustainable life for.

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