Pope and Swift; Scarthin and Scrivener's

Coffee arrived in England in the seventeenth century, sparking a profusion of cafes - the one in Oxford's Queen's Lane, est. 1654, still survives. These steam-filled, aromatic coffee houses became centres of intellectual activity and a symbol of the Age of Enlightenment – as Swift satirizes in his passage:

Sauntering in Coffee-house is Dulman seen;
He damns the Climate, and complains of Spleen

Starbucks may have conquered the capital but in a wet, windy and wild corner of the country, the coffee shop spirit still holds sway. Scarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire, complete coffee shop, may not look impressive from outside, but inside it has the logic-defying layout and fantastical dimensions of a J K Rowling creation.

Five-foot-high piles of books defy gravity, bookcases swing aside to reveal hidden rooms and staircases stretch seemingly endlessly upwards. Instead of the usual "mind your head" signs, pinned to the low ceilings, here one finds notes reading "Entirely unfair prize for tall people" - bang your head and win a book. It's not so much that this is a different kind of bookshop but that, once inside, you are forced to admit that you have never before encountered a true "bookshop". Waterstones, Borders and even, dare I say it, Heffers, are but shadows on the wall of Plato's cave compared to this wonderful, wacky establishment.

But that's just by way of introduction. Now onto the books. In his Areopagitica, Milton wrote:

'Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are'

and that same belief in the power of books is seen throughout both Scarthin and its rival and near neighbour, Scrivener's in Buxton, Derbyshire. Here, books are cared for in their frail, old age and even the oddest volume is prized for its quirks, its feel and, possibly most importantly, its smell. New books are too often all shine, sparkle and superficiality - the "it-girls" of the book world. The volumes that people the shelves (see Milton, above) of Scrivener's and Scarthin have character: personal notes to loved ones in the front, newspaper cuttings tucked inside the cover, line drawings coloured in by a child, now long grown-up.

These are not books to read and then discard: these are books to which one can return for reassurance and reference; books to pass on to the next generation; books which can be placed proudly and prominently on a bookcase. In short, books to be treasured. A visit to Scarthin or Scrivener's is a trip back in time and their beckoning armchairs, a welcome escape from the rain-lashed fields of a Derbyshire October.

'My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky'

‘In that county, there was enough to be seen, to occupy the chief of their three weeks…all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak…[but] It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire’

If only she had. Jane Austen’s fleeting reference to the ‘celebrated beauties’ of Derbyshire, in Pride and Prejudice, always leaves me wishing she’d elaborated. But is her instinct correct?

Derbyshire, and in particular the Peak District, is world-renowned as a place of natural beauty and as a hot-spot for every imaginable activity involving lycra. From mountain-biking to climbing, from caving to hiking, the Peak is the place to go. Rock climbing enthusiasts, for example, flock to the area for the bouldering (both indoor and out).

Is it wrong, therefore, to expect the area to be a fertile ground for the arts too? One doesn’t expect Stratford-upon-Avon to invest in a world-class bouldering wall: why should we, then, expect the Peak District to produce poets?

Because landscapes demand a response. Cows, sheep and horses may stare blankly at the view: humans feel an impulse to react, to interpret, to communicate; even if that communication is only a breathless “Wow!”

Of course, it’s often much more than a “wow”, as in the painstaking landscape paintings of John Constable. The effect of a landscape spread out before the eye was not lost on Constable: ‘There has never been an age, however rude and uncultivated, in which the love of landscape has not been in some way manifested.’ Whether it’s Constable’s depiction of cumulus clouds or Wordsworth’s description of a frozen lake, the impulse ‘to turn landscape into art’, as Margaret Drabble writes in her book A Writer’s Britain, ‘seems a natural one’. Drabble, however, suggests ‘it is hard to say precisely why painters and writers should labour to reproduce in paint or words what each of us can see with our own eyes’.

To my understanding, there is nothing strange, unexpected or baffling about this impulse: Forster grasped the kernel of the matter when he wrote ‘Only connect’; Alan Bennett’s Hector understood when he proclaimed ‘Pass it on, boys’. The need to share an individual experience lies at the very heart of the creative impulse: it drives writers to write and painters to paint.

When Wordsworth describes ‘O Derwent! winding among grassy holms’ or ‘the morning light…yellowing the hill tops’, we see the landscape as he did: that precise moment is captured in his words and recreated each time it is read. And that, to me, seems to be the point.

A Portrait of the Artist

It may not be the Uffizi, the Tate collection may dwarf it and it can’t touch the Louvre for sheer grandeur, but the Graves Gallery in Sheffield has its own attractions.

‘Art’, as Alan Bennett so concisely puts it, ‘is hard on the feet’: I vividly remember willing the endless corridors of the Uffizi to end so I could have a sit down. The Graves exhibition space spans no more than seven rooms and, Alan Bennett would be pleased to know, there are plenty of seats.

The Gallery opened in 1934 from the support of a local businessman, John Graves, who also donated his private collection. In a space high above the hustle and bustle of the city of Sheffield, the visitor to the gallery finds him or herself in a hidden treasure trove of masterpieces – ancient and modern – and with peace, quiet and semi-solitude in which to ponder them. People know about the Graves Gallery, of course, but visiting with one Sheffield resident (“I must have been before, on a school trip perhaps”) it became clear that these works – whose artists include JMW Turner, Pisarro, Gauguin, Cézanne and Lowry – remain a well-kept secret. At the more modern end, there is the well-known and controversial marble sculpture by Marc Quinn, Kiss.

These works are all in the permanent collection, but let’s turn our attention to one of the current temporary exhibitions: A Picture of Us? Identity in British Art. The exhibition organisers asked a host of writers, artists and musicians this question:

“Every picture tells a story. Which one tells yours?”

The result is a wonderfully eclectic collection ranging from a Henry Moore maquette chosen by Lisa Cheung to a drawing by William Blake chosen by one of the founders of the fashion label Red or Dead. There is no coherence to the collection – but this is no criticism – the artworks themselves are only one, rather small, part of this exhibition. This is an exhibition which examines why we like particular pieces of art, what it means to ‘like’ a painting, why and how we identify with a piece. Alan Bennett’s own view on this is that it’s ‘hard to divorce appreciation from possession, so I know I like a picture only when I’m tempted to walk out with it under my raincoat’. Kate Rusby chooses her painting (The Grey Mare, Alfred Munnings) because it reminds her of the shire horses she saw at country fairs when she was a child. Two of the pieces have been chosen by students from Sheffield: a huge mahogany Eve by Edna Manley was chosen by a student from Firth Park Community Arts College because ‘she is an African woman like me’.

The best element of this exhibition is not what the writers and artists tell us about the paintings, but what each chosen painting tells us about that particular writer or artist. Barry Hines, the author of A Kestrel for a Knave, chooses a painting of two Buffer Girls by William Rothenstein. Buffer Girls were an integral part of the Sheffield steel industry and have since become a symbol of both this history and the character of the city. Hines writes of the women, ‘they are not subservient, bucolic, or in chains, but gaze out strongly and with hope’. Hines went to school in Sheffield and, the exhibition tells us, has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Hines’ chosen picture captures something of the fabled pride, toughness and practical stoicism of the people of Sheffield; this choice, whether consciously or unconsciously, betrays a desire to tap into this strength in the face of his own personal struggle.

This exhibition runs until 5 December 2009.