The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England: Revised Edition

The late Prof. Cooper was my kind of tourist set loose in a car in England.He avoids the M roads and the A roads with single digits. He gives clear directions. He has an eye for the peculiar, the unique, the unsettling. But most of all, he's an enthusiast. He's read the greats and an astonishing quantity of not so great.He knew his Dickens and Kipling, although I wish he was still alive so I could tip him to something he didn't know about Kipling's sojourn in Rottingdean, Sussex, and its tangible connexion to today: Kipling's familiarity with England's first family of traditional songs, the Copper family. An American who hears Kipling's poetry in the settings of Peter Bellamy will have good reason to reappraise Kipling.I'm leaving for Kent this week. After reading Cooper, I'll only be bringing him and Ordinance maps along. I won't need anything else.