In Brightening from the East Ken Worpole explores a unique ‘region of the mind’ – the Thames Estuary and the marshland landscapes of the East Anglian shoreline. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, personal and historical, Worpole brings us the stories of radical communities, of arcadian dreams among the shabby plotlands of eastern England, of new ways of living. He ranges further afield too, writing on Italian cemeteries, Dutch landscape architects and the English twentieth century folk revival. Here Worpole convincingly argues that the Essex landscape has always been a refuge for new ideas, and a place where practical idealism could flourish, a place the world might learn from. Brightening from the East also contains Worpole’s influential essay, ‘The New English Landscape’.