The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics Sir Thomas Browne's skull a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem recession-hit seaside towns wooded hills Joseph Conrad Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson " the natural history of the herring the massive bombings of WWII the dowager empress Tzu Hsi and the silk industry in Norwich.