dreamshark

Two or three years ago I started trying to identify the bizarre regional accent in a podcast drama and spent about 4 hours clicking my way through online articles about the fascinating West Country dialect. Did you know that's the accent people are mimicking when they "talk like a pirate, arrrr?" That's because Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in a variety of film and TV shows in the 1950's, hailed from Dorset. And that's only one of the many fascinating tidbits I learned that night. Let's just say it is a linguistically interesting part of England.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2012, when Amber asked for some "historical fiction in Nook format." She never said it had to be NEW historical fiction, so I started downloading *.epub versions of Sir Walter Scott, Conan Doyle, and eventually Richard Doddridge Blackmore. Both Richard and I recall reading Lorna Doone when we were kids and retaining the vague idea that it was set in Scotland somewhere. Well, it's not. It's set in Exmoor. It's based on the lurid local history of the outlaw Doone clan, but what we mostly remembered was the black cliffs and waterfalls of Doone Glen and the exquisite spookiness of the soggy, foggy moors. And where is Exmoor? Just a short 50 miles or so from Dartmoor, the setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles. Remember the craggy tors towering above the treacherous Grimpen Mire, where all those innocent wild ponies sank screaming to their deaths? Doesn't that sound like a fine place for a vacation?

So now I'm planning (just in case a trip abroad suddenly seems possible) a literary tour of the West Country of England. What other writers and artists have been inspired by the West Country? Thomas Hardy comes to mind. And Agatha Christie. Terry Pratchett?

Here's a picture of some adorable Exmoor Ponies, just waiting to be sucked down into the mire.