Can you recommend some lighter reading?

If you are now yearning to read books containing the phrase “where five rivers meet” then here are some of the Salisbury-based books that were recommended to me.

The links on each book are to Goodreads.

Edward Rutherfurd’s “Sarum” – best by far. Read it at least twice, and then you can use it as a handy doorstop as it weighs about 3kg. The story of the stonemason Osmund carving the chapter house frieze is just great.

Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” – not about Salisbury despite what everyone says. Also everyone in the book ends up exactly as unhappy as they were when it started. However the setting of the book during the period of maximum cathedral building is very interesting.

William Golding’s “The Spire” – written as an entry for the Nobel Literature Prize, which it won. No need to read this one – you can tell people you’ve read it because they won’t have got to the end either. The story finishes before the spire does, by the way.

Instead see if you can find a copy of “Elias – A story of the founding of Salisbury” which has been written by Sue Allenby, one of the guides at the cathedral.  It is thoroughly researched and is the book I wish I could have been clever enough to write.  It is however out of print so you will need to find a second hand copy.

And also sitting proudly on the line between non-fiction and fiction is Leslie Thomas’ “Almost Heaven” – I suspect that the byline “True and almost true tales about a cathedral” is simply there to allow him to tell true stories more freely.

You may be able to guess from this blog that I have spent more time reading non-fiction than fiction about Salisbury.  Some other Salisbury-based books I haven’t yet read are:

“Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain” by local author Barnaby Norris,

“Cathedral of Bones” which is the first in the Ela of Salisbury Medieval Mysteries series starring our very own Ela Longespee as a fictional detective (hmm) by J.G. Lewis, and

“The Red Room” in the Atticus Priest series by Mark Dawson.

And finally, in my constant quest to ensure that you spend even more time discovering things, there is a marvellous site called Mappit which allows you to search books by their location.

Here is the entry for Salisbury Cathedral – as always, check your diary for the rest of the day before clicking on this one: https://www.mappit.net/bookmap/places/605/salisbury-cathedral-salisbury-england-gb/