A meditation on the concept of northerly places, which draws upon the writings of Nabokov, Auden and others, as well as mythology, films and visual art. Davidson explores Nordic Renaisssance winter paintings, German Romantic landscapes, Scandinavian Biedermeyer and 20th-century prints, taking in the work of artists as varied as Andy Goldsworthy, Eric Ravilious and Ian Hamilton Finlay and writers including W. H. Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis and John Buchan. He ends with a consideration of Iceland, called by Auden and McNeice in 1936 as "furthest, most remote, most distant, most northerly."  (ARC159, $27.00)