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Without the odd signpost and a clearer structure, the reader sometimes feels like a traveller whose regular train suddenly gives way to a replacement bus service. You know you’ll get there in the end, but the route and the arrival time are something of a mystery.Yet you often see things on these trips that you’d normally miss. Those who persevere through the rather forbidding opening chapters will be rewarded with an invigorating tour of the high plains of cultural endeavour. There are enough good ideas to sustain four or five smaller volumes.

Things do go downhill a bit towards the end – Bracewell’s original subtitle was “… from Wilde to Morrissey”, and the final chapter on dance music and Britpop feels somewhat tacked on and overtaken by events – but that will only be a problem for those who have opened their fizzy drinks too early in the journey.. Behind the King’s Head in Wadenhoe a grassy bank sweeps down to the river. It’s actually the mill cut; downstream the water races and foams over the weir. Between us and the river proper the water meadows, despite the drought, are green and the cattle graze contentedly. With a pint of Adnams (the pub is a free house) in your hand, the idyll is just about complete… But the drink is for later when you have completed this figure-of-eight walk from Wadenhoe, through woodland and meadow, passing two churches and a 17th-century folly It’s about five and a half miles in length.

At this time of year you need no more than stout shoes.
Wadenhoe is Saxon for “hill ford”. Northamptonshire hills are not high but here the Rockingham Forest plateau falls upon the River Nene down a green cliff. With the pub and village at your back, bear through the gate up the steepish hill to the village church, St Michael and All Angels.Locals dispute the pronunciation – “Neen” versus “Nenn”. The river slowly drains the slopes of Daventry and Northampton, then winds its way through the boost and shoe country round Wellingborough and Rushden to Thrapston Beyond Wadenhoe the river deepens as it passes into fenland.

Beyond the churchyard the path cuts across a sheep field to the metalled road running from Wadenhoe to Aldwincle, another riverside gem. Turn left for about a hundred yards then follow the green footpath sign to the right, at a field’s edge for about 250 yards. This puts you athwart the track running from Wadenhoe to Lowick (where the octagonal church tower is a wonder to behold). Cross the track and take the farm road for half a mile, past some lodge buildings on your left before bearing right, on the path/track through woodland.The next half hour of this walk is through Rockingham Forest. Few of the old stands still exist, true, but in the denser sections of Wadenhoe Wood, to your right, it’s not hard to understand why some woodland villages used to place lanterns in their towers to help travellers locate themselves.Out of the wood, the land opens like a great lawn Take the track rightwards and contemplate man’s folly.

Literally: this naked building, standing in a field, is Lyveden New Bield, the never-finished Jacobean mansion built by the Tresham family. (If Sir Thomas had had his way in 1605 the Jacobean dynasty would have been finished, too – he was associated with the Gunpowder Plot.) The house is maintained by the National Trust; if the custodian is not about, there is a bucket on his gate for the entry fee. Why was it built; why was it never finished? Occultists will have a field day for the Treshams also built the mysterious Triangular Lodge on the same leyline near Rushton.With the building at your back bear diagonally across a field (following the signpost) into Lilford Wood. In the open again, across a bullrush stream, the track takes you after half a mile on to the Wadenhoe-Lowick road Bear left then left on the metalled road.