THE shadows of the past may be all around us but it takes a bit of wondering, and wandering for that matter, to uncover them in the modern-day world.

That's exactly what Essex University lecturer James Canton has done for his latest book, Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain.

In the book James travels the length of Britain in a quest to discover the wonders of our natural history which occupied ancient minds, immersing himself in the contours, geography and geology of the landscape, on a trail of prehistoric enlightenment.

"I started writing it about two years ago," James says, "but the idea originated many years previously with my fascination with ancient stone circles. I've spent decades going off in search of them from Cornwall to Scotland but about five years ago I started visiting specific places starting with this stone which someone told me about that has this undeciphered script on it. Before I went up there I didn't realise the owners of the land didn't allow people to go there. That became a bit of adventure and so I started to think about other aspects of ancient history that might offer up similar adventures for me."

And so a whole series of wonderings and wanderings by James began to take place all over the country from the Pictish stone north of Aberdeen to the edge of an Ice Age land in the North Sea to a missing part of an old Roman Road somewhere between Gosfield and Long Melford.

The director of studies of the Wild Writing course at Essex University had already scored a big success with his book about rural wanderings in the county, Out of Essex back in 2013 which looked at various sites that inspired writers such as Charles Dickens, Arthur Ransome and H G Wells.

"It was really playing around with that word 'wondering'," he smiles. "I would pose myself a question about ancient history and then go off and try and find the answer."

For example what it might have been like for our pre-historic ancestors to knap a flint arrowhead in the far west of Scotland.

"In a place like West Tiree," he begins, "Once you've got the idea that the sea level has shifted quite considerably you can work out the best place to knap a flint arrow head, and that's what I did. Sitting there looking at the landscape much like our ancestors would have done, you can get a real connection of what it might have been like 8,000 years ago."

A wandering closer to home was James' passion to find evidence of the missing eight miles of Roman road from Gosfield to Long Melford.

"It's near where I live in Halstead," he tells me, "and it became a bit of a community project trying to find it in the landscape."

And did he?

"Ah, for that you'll have to read the book," he grins.

Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain came out yesterday by William Collins, priced £20 in hardback.