For more than two hundred years the Lake District has been regarded as one of the most beautiful regions of England. Today it continues to exercise a powerful hold on the imagination and, despite its popularity -- more than 20 million people visit every year -- has managed to retain its natural beauty and tranquility. But what is the source of its magnetic attraction and how did it come to exert such a spell? Ian Thompson, who grew up in nearby Barrow-in-Furness and went fell-walking from an early age, is well equipped to reveal the region's special allure. He tells how the chance combination of Georgian England's fascination with the Alps and the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars provided the spark for a national and later international obsession. And in brief, elegant chapters he shows how Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and De Quincey transformed the perception of the region from one of ̀horrid mountains' to ̀vales of peace'. Artists, guides, climbers, conservationists and storytellers, including J. M. W. Turner, John Ruskin, Harriet Martineau, Beatrix Potter, O. G. Jones, Arthur Ransome and the great twentieth-century populariser of fell-walking, Alfred Wainwright, have each in their different ways added to our perception of this magical place. Crammed with fascinating details and illustrated with thompson's own superb colour photography, as well as paintings, etchings and archive photography, The English Lakes is a comprehensive delight.