Norman Nicholson’s Nature

Norman Cornthwaite Nicholson was born, on 8 January 1914, in Millom. Norman died in 1987 as one of the town’s more widely known and respected characters, a nationally treasured poet, topographical writer, playwright, lecturer, and broadcaster, though one not without his critics. Apart from a couple of years in a New Forest tuberculosis sanatorium, he lived all his life in a terraced house, which as a boy and young adult was his father’s outfitters shop, in a corner of old Cumberland that proved the genius loci for his life and work. This book, by Ian O. Brodie, looks afresh at Nicholson’s writing and suggests that we need to regard him as a much greater committed nature writer than previously recognised. The book explores the writer’s relationship between people, place, nature, industry and geology and concludes that in Nicholson’s writings we can find the basis for a contemporary conservation ethic