Winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2025.
Faber, March 2024. Order from Bookshop.org.
Audiobook narrated by the author. Listen with Audible.
‘A perfectly written, highly original and deeply moving account of hundreds of years of life in a corner of southern England. Harris has written the life of this place, butThe Rising Down is also the life writing of a historian from that place, of her making, and the growth of her mind there. Extraordinary – and riveting.‘ – Tim Dee
‘Brilliant and beautifully written, Alexandra Harris’s new book is a remarkable achievement. Every chapter is a revelation. The imaginative intelligence at work here makes the landscape of Sussex come to life, deepening and brightening as each stone is turned and tapped to spark fresh thought. This is a world of writers and artists, architects and artisans, both inspirational and intimate. A masterpiece of observation, detection, and meditation, The Rising Down is ground-breaking in the true sense.’ – Fiona Stafford
‘Harris casts her eye over the deep history of the Sussex landscape where, as a child, she trained and honed her astonishing powers of artistic perception and literary vision. The result is a history of a patch of England that contains in it the history of a country, an Empire, and its people: the people whose lives shine down through the centuries but also, arrestingly, the people who have long been silenced by history. In a book that transcends the distinctions of life-writing, fiction and history, Harris asks what it means to inhabit a place, as she traces her own long preoccupation with the places, people, paintings and books of her youth in a brilliant and moving masterpiece.’ – Daisy Hay
‘The seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey wanted to survey Sussex, after he had completed Surrey, but as so often, his project was left unfinished. In our own time, Harris has picked up Aubrey’s thread, set off on the chalky paths, into the coppices and along the banks of the River Arun, to celebrate and record lives embedded in a circumscribed patch of land. Humane, humorous and joyful, Harris reminds us that all history is natural and local history, and death comes slowest of all for stones and names.’ – Ruth Scurr
