The Pathway

The Pathway is the fourth and concluding volume in Henry Williamson's Flax of Dream sequence. Willie Maddison fought in the First World War, and suffered fully its tragedies. Now he returns to his beloved Devon, to the wind-swept Taw estuary, with its swift alternation of sun and rain, its bird-filled saltmarshes and marram-covered sandhills. He comes here to live out, and try to express in writing, insights that have taken shape from his boyhood and wartime experience. The Flax of Dream is a masterpiece. The four novels that comprise it have been reissued in Faber Finds: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway.