Never Eat Shredded Wheat

It’s hard to believe Christopher Somerville when he says he hated geography at school. The best-selling walks author and regular walk columnist revels in the variety of Britain’s place names and landscapes in his writing, with a familiarity that could only come from a geeky love of maps and knowing every single county town. But autodidacts often make the most passionate teachers, and this entertaining tome attempts to do for geography what Eats, Shoots and Leaves did for English grammar. Subtitled The Geography We’ve Lost and How to Find it Again, Somerville presents an overview of Britain that’s quirky, methodical, engaging and – most importantly – memorable, helped immeasurably by some ingenious illustrations. Dominic Bates

Christopher Somerville,
£12.99, www.hodder.co.uk,
ISBN 978 1 444 70463 1