David Matless

“Force yourself to see more flatly.” - Georges Perec, Species of Spaces

‘The Broads’ is the name given to a wetland region of eastern England. The broads themselves are shallow lakes, formed from flooded medieval peat excavations, set alongside or within the courses of the rivers Ant, Bure, Thurne, Waveney and Yare. Navigation, holidays and nature conservation have shaped the region, with tensions arising from differing assumptions about what the Broads landscape has been, is and might be.

The Regional Book examines, in descriptions of forty-four locations, the Broads’ varied constitution: nature reserves, towns, riversides, marshes, seasides, waterways broad and narrow, broads landlocked and connected. The writing rubs against conventional forms of attention and styles of seeing, creating inventories that encompass fact, digression, memory and reverie. If Broadland is a flat landscape, with few rises, it remains possible to see more flatly.