Noreen Masud has always loved flatlands. Her earliest memory is of a wide, flat field glimpsed from the back seat of her father's car in Lahore. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands seeking solace and belonging, her memoir ‘A Flat Place’ weaves together impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore, history, and recollections of her early life.

Masud reads from ‘A Flat Place’ in the presence of seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish landscapes by artists such as Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob van Ruisdael and later works by Rubens. At the time, landscapes were considered inferior in status to large images of historical events or biblical stories and to portraits of people of high standing.

These artists were the first to recognise and grasp the significance of landscape as a means of expressing mood, atmosphere and delight in the natural world. Masud’s memoir equally shows how places that have been overlooked as flat and empty are alive with significance.