RETURN TO THE BALTIC

A celebrated essayist a century ago, Hillaire Belloc is scarcely remembered today. This account of his travels through Scandinavia in 1938, 43 years after his first visit there as a boy, could be a niche title. But Alex Hyde-White’s splendid British enunciation breathes character and immediacy into the prose. Two bygone eras are thus evoked, each with a certain narrowness and innocence of vision that, today’s listener can’t help remembering, would soon be swept away by war and social change. Belloc’s visit to Elsinor is a high point here as history and literature merge, and a succession of centuries blends into an image of place and time, a way of living with the natural world and ourselves, that’s gone forever. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2014]