John Phillips: Yorkshire’s Traveller Through Time by Colin Speakman

Description John Phillips (1800-1874) arrived in Yorkshire in 1819 as a penniless teenager, the nephew and apprentice of the great pioneering geologist and cartographer William “Strata” Smith. Yet within a few years Phillips had: completed the first detailed geological surveys of the Yorkshire Coast and Carboniferous limestones of the Yorkshire Dales, become Senior Secretary to the prestigious Yorkshire Philosophical Society been appointed the Keeper of the Yorkshire Museum in York, helped establish the highly influential British Association for the Advancement of Science in York in 1831, established a reputation as a gifted teacher, lecturer and administrator held Professorships at London, Dublin and Oxford Universities, made significant discoveries in astronomy and meteorology, become recognised as a world-leading palaeontologist who helped create the concept of “Deep Time” . But the main focus of this book by well-known Yorkshire author Colin Speakman is Phillips’ remarkable achievements as writer and artist—one of the first great interpreters of Yorkshire‘s landscape heritage. In 1853 Phillips also wrote and published one of the world first railway tourist guide books. This 192 page, lavishly illustrated book is as much about Yorkshire as it is about John Phillips as Speakman traces, through word and image, Phillips’ many journeys, mainly on foot, through Yorkshire’s most spectacular countryside.