The Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go

From the Sunday Times bestseller of The Red of my Blood and My Wild and Sleepless Nights comes an inspiring memoir about home, family, and belonging.

'A travel book about wanting to stay put: a pilgrimage through a fabled English landscape … Stroud’s best memoir yet, the most invigoratingly expansive, strikingly written. Moving … Transformative.' Daily Mail

'Stroud writes gloriously… a deeply thoughtful exploration of the meaning of home and belonging'. - i News

'In the Giant on the Skyline, Stroud has produced something exceptional: a mystical meditation on what home means and what constitutes belonging … It is magical and haunting and profoundly moving.' Spectator

'Raw, honest and poignant.' Woman's Own

'One of the books we're most looking forward to in 2024' - Good Housekeeping


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Would you give up your home for your partner's career? What is it that makes your home a home? Can you make a home without the roots that tie you to a place? What is a home when a family is split?

Clover's eldest children are leaving home for university. Her husband Pete's work is in America.

The only way for Clover and the younger children to live with him is to uproot, leave their rural life near the ancient Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and move to Washington DC.

Forced to leave the home she loves, Clover sets out to explore the place where she lives, understand the history of her landscape, and work out why it is that it is so hard for her to go.

In this profound and moving memoir, Sunday Times bestselling author Clover Stroud paints a beautifully layered portrait of home, family, community and of belonging.


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'I loved this…She writes with force, power, and a radical transparency. It's a gift.’ - Cal Flynn

'This incredibly special book will make you think of all the places and people you have ever called home.’ - Emma Gannon

'I’m blown away by Clover’s writing. So impressive, inspiring, fluid, honest and resonant.’ - James Aldred

‘A beautiful book, written in lyrical, liquid prose that seems to flow straight from the heart to the page.’ - Sophy Roberts

‘Few writers I know have this intense intimacy, or such an immediately engaging effect on a reader. It really is magic.’ - Lucy Atkins

‘Clover’s most profound and moving, and unquestionably her most soaringly beautiful…’ - Juliet Nicolson

Praise for Clover Stroud

'A fearless explorer of the human heart.' - Elizabeth Gilbert

'Stroud's writing is knife-sharp, beautiful and profound.' - Madeline Miller

'Clover's writing is sensationally beautiful.' - Laura Cumming

'I love Clover Stroud's writing. It feels like she's mining for treasure, drilling down with lyrical prose, getting to the thing that makes us human.' - Christie Watson

About the Author