Conrad was born (1857) in Berdychiv, once part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, at the time of his birth Ukraine, but under the rule of the Russian Empire. So: our walk was to the Kent village of Bishopsbourne, where Joseph Conrad spent the last years of his life (from 1920 to 1924), in Oswalds, a handsome but comparatively modest house settled next to the church, and looking out over the parkland just described. And you may well be wondering, with a little irritation as I perambulate, what this has to do with Empire and the importance of rediscovering the colonial dimensions of literature. Our walk was from the village of Bridge to Bishopsbourne. As a result, magical myths have grown up round it, including one suggesting that St Augustine caused the waters to flow, analogously with his bringing the waters of Christianity to Kent and thus to Britain. Though its rising is usually associated with wet winters, no-one knows or can predict when it will appear or disappear. Last April at exactly the same time, as Google photos reminds me, it was in full spate. (It is the device that gives Glyndebourne its sense of the bucolic.) But there is one force of nature in Bourne Park that doesn’t admit of human control: the Nailbourne, a stream that rises as it wills then disappears leaving a perfectly scooped dry bed, a deep shadow of a river. Such landscapes were in their origin highly controlled, even using the ha ha (a hidden ditch) to give the impression of garden rolling inexorably into countryside with grazing animals in the near view, at the same time ensuring that those animals couldn’t stray into the environs of the house. As we walked amongst grazing sheep, on green sward, willows in the near distance, a glimpse of a stretch of water, and unfolding beyond fields, hedges, copses – all felt happily natural. Whoever designed Bourne Park was skilled indeed. Actually it was Kentish parkland, and in the context of a fine early 18 th century house, it was undoubtedly constructed in the image of an ideal of nature, rather than being a product of nature itself.

A few months ago, in the balmy Spring weather, I walked with friends through what felt like quintessentially English countryside.

Heart of darkness first edition