SHOULD BE FAMOUS

MORRIS MARPLES ‘Mankind in general has seldom regarded walking as a pleasure’ – so begins Marple’s book Shanks’s

Pony (1960), before taking a fascinating romp through the history of people who do. It is jammed with intriguing tales of pedestrians from the well-known (Wordsworth) to the more retiring (Ellen Weeton), and it has led us down many a curious rabbit-hole and inspired a few features too. Yet Morris seems to have been so low-profile that we can’t find a single pic of him, despite the fact he wrote numerous books on a gallimaufry of subjects including white horses and other hill figures, Sarn Helen roman road, the education of princes, and poets, a history of football and a volume of public school slang – some of which he presumably heard in his day-job as a head teacher. Ripping stuff!