Alan Garner on Alderley Edge: 'The hill was my playground, school and world'

The children's author on growing up at the foot of the Cheshire cliffs that he would later come to treasure The Garners don't travel. Mostly they stay around the slopes of the hill of Alderley Edge in Cheshire, on the square mile known as the Hough, where they have been since at least 1592, when the first parish register mentions the burial of William Garner "del hough". As a child I lived in a cottage at the foot of the Edge. The hill was my playground, school and world. It was where I learned ...