Country diary: A secret hideaway, and a mystery solved

Marshwood Vale, Dorset: Starting in the hamlet of Lower Denhay, a friend and I retrace the steps of a fictional hero who's on the runSoon after the first chiffchaffs arrived, I visited one of the most secret places in Dorset. It was a lost lane, overgrown with a hedge the width of a cottage, on a "half-moon of low rabbit-cropped hills" overlooking the Marshwood Vale.Here, in Geoffrey Household's 1939 thriller Rogue Male, a political assassin goes to ground after failing to kill Hitler. Hunted like an animal, he digs into the bank of a sunken trackway, burrowing into the soft, sandy foxmould (a type of sandstone) to create a cramped den beneath a patch of bramble and sloe. Continue reading...