When I think of books whose messages have stayed with me down the years, I often think of Ulverton, which contrives somehow to feel more "authentic" than many a "non-fictional" historical text in bringing the past alive, lifting the edge of the veil and allowing us to see - at times almost voyeuristically - what Dylan Thomas called the "yellowing, dicky-bird watching pictures of the dead".
One of the novel's online reviewers captured Ulverton's strange essence very well: "this book is with me for the rest of my life. I drive past a village (any village) and I see a church tower or a beautiful field, an old man, a war memorial, or a ramshackle pub and up pops Ulverton...it opens minds to what has been, what is and what will (or may) be".
Earlier, John Fowles proclaimed of Adam Thorpe's novel when it was first published: "suddenly English lives again!"