The Plot

The Plot
Publisher: Granta Books, 2009
A Biography of an English Acre

On a remote edge of the North York moors, where a grassy hillside overlooks the Vale of York, there is a secluded acre of land, edged by woods, called Scotch Corner. A mysterious war memorial chapel stands there, a simple stone building, decorated with bold carvings.

Madeleine Bunting’s father – an artist and visionary, but also a fiercely conservative man, with romantic, old-fashioned views about England – erected the chapel in his youth. He was a difficult, distant parent, and Bunting fled her home life in Yorkshire as a teenager. But after her father’s death, Bunting wanted to understand him and his passionate, lifelong attachment to this plot of land, and she wanted to explore how we find a sense of belonging.