Pendle By Alastair Lee

Alastair Lee's best known for a succession of award-winning mountain films, the latest of which is On Sight, but as his new coffee table book 'Pendle' shows, he's also a very talented landscape photographer.


It's a lovely book, not just because the images, many of them double-page panoramas, are often screamingly, almost embarassingly beautiful, but because of what lies behind it. Alastair lives close to the bottom of Pendle Hill and his love for it seeps out of the photos.

'I love the hill because it's the closest thing to me.' He says in the introduction to the book. 'I have witnessed it in almost every kind of atmospheric condition possible and climbed it from all angles and multitude of times. Despite the unrelenting wind and rain Pendle remains solid, secure and unchanged. It is home.'

It's his touchstone when he returns from the big mountains and the photos show it from every possible angle in just about every possible weather and light. Close-up and intimate, far off and almost incidental, it's all there and strangely fascinating.

It's lovely to see a small 500-metre odd hill celebrated so affectionately and we suspect it's something a lot of OM readers will relate to. The bare statistics, if you care, are that it's a 120-page, 33cm x 21cm softback book and published by Francis Lincoln.

The price is £14.99 and if you order it direct from Alastair's own web site at www.posingproductions.com he'll sign it for you as well.

Finally, Alastair's going to be talking about the book on BBC Radio 4 this Saturday morning, 31 January so keep your ears peeled.