As with the compass needle, so people have always been most powerfully attracted northwards; everyone carries within them their own concept of north. ” The Idea of North” is a study, ranging widely in time & place, of some of the ways in which these ideas have found expression. Peter Davidson explores the topography of north as represented in images & literature, taking in Netherlandic winter paintings of the Renaissance, German Romantic landscapes, Scandinavian Biedermeyer & twentieth-century topographical painting & printmaking. He examines a bewildering diversity of mythologies & imaginings of north, including The Snow Queen; Scandinavian Sagas; ghost-stories; Moomintrolls, Arctic exploration; the fictitious snowy kingdoms of Zembla & Naboland; Nabokov`s nostalgias; Baltic midsummer; rooms in winter light; compasses & star-stones; hoar-frost; &, ice & glass. The book also traces a northward journey, describing northern rural Engl&, industrial sites, & the long emptiness of the borders, Scotland & the Highlands. He looks at the region far north of Scotl&, then moves to the Northern Netherlands & Scandinavia to explore their identifiable northernness. The last visited place is Icel&, identified by W.H. Auden & Louis Mc Neice in 1936 as furthest, most remote, most distant, most northerly`. An engaging meditation on solitude, absence & stillness, ” The Idea of North” shows north to be a goal rather than a destination, a place of revelation that is always somewhere ultimate & austere.