Where Light in Darkness Lies: The Story of the Lighthouse

(Hardback)

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Suspended between sea and sky, battered by the waves and the wind, lighthouses mark the battlelines between the elements. They guard the boundaries between the solid human world and the primordial chaos of the waters; between stability and instability; between the known and the unknown. As such, they have a strange, universal appeal that few other manmade structures possess. Engineered to draw the gaze of sailors, lighthouses have likewise long attracted the attention of soldiers and saints, artists and poets, novelists and filmmakers, colonizers and migrants, and, today more than ever, heritage tourists and developers. Their evocative locations, their isolation and resilience have turned these structures into complex metaphors, magnets for stories. This book explores the rich story of the lighthouse in the human imagination.

Reviews

'Hauntingly beautiful, dazzlingly written and brimming with amazing information, Where Light in Darkness Lies is brilliant on lighthouses as symbols of the human struggle for survival and meaning in the face of an ever-encroaching darkness. With her extraordinary eye for detail and evocatively poetic language, Veronica della Dora guides us effortlessly through history, geography, literature, religion, art, film and, not least, actual lighthouses, changing the way we see and understand the world.' Maximos Constas

Author Bio

Veronica della Dora is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her books include Mountain: Nature and Culture (Reaktion, 2016).