This first appeared in the brilliant Dartmoor News magazine – https://www.dartmoornews.co.uk/
Writing a Dartmoor Novel
By John Bainbridge, whose book Gibbet Hill has just been published.
Sixty years ago, when I first started to discover Dartmoor, I read very widely about the Moor. William Crossing was my inspiration – I did every single walk and route in his Guide to Dartmoor while I was still a teenager. All the other Dartmoor writers too: Worth, Malim, Pilkington-Rodgers, Baring-Gould etc. But I also enjoyed reading the novelists of Dartmoor – Eden Phillpotts, John Trevena, L.A.G. Strong, Jan Stewer, Beatrice Chase etc., particularly Phillpotts, who wrote some very good literary Dartmoor novels, as well as lighter fictions.
Even then I wanted to write a Dartmoor novel. I started several and ditched them. When I came to write and publish novels, I tended to set them…
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John Bainbridge Writer 