Tevershall village – a village which began almost at the park gates, and trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile: houses, rows of wretched, small begrimed brick houses with black slate roofs for lids, sharp angles and wilful blank dreariness.

Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex downs: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in the utter soulless ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands at a glance, and left it at what it was: unbelievable, and not to be thought about.

Space, of course, is alive

that's why it moves about;

and that's what makes it eternally spacious and unstuffy.

And somewhere it has a wild heart

that sends pulses even through me …

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.