Some people find the idea of a 'sense of place' a nebulous concept or dismiss it out of hand, but for me it's a vital and important element of my life (and has been since I was a small child) and it's certainly at the heart of the songs I write. In one way or another it's also at the heart of most folk song and music, although it may have become diluted by time and performance and removal from its original context.

To clarify what I'm talking about, let me give you just a few examples of what I mean by 'sense of place', related in particular to the British Isles. It seems to have been deeply rooted in the consciousness, and inherent in artefacts and man-made creations going back to Neolithic times. Fast-forwarding, its more modern manifestations can be seen in the works of Blake and Wordsworth, in the paintings of Palmer, Turner and Constable, and then on through to the neo-romantics including Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, Thomas Hardy, A E Housman, Elgar, Vaughn Williams, T .H. White, Gerard Manley Hopkins and my own personal favourite author, John Cowper Powys.

More recently still, I can cite Ted Hughes, Peter Ackroyd, my old friend, Roger Deakin, and the superb series of painting of my beloved Yorkshire Wolds by David Hockney entitled 'A Year in Yorkshire'. Just the tip of the iceberg.

Get the idea? My point is: how much of this feeling is still intrinsic in traditional folk music and does it still evoke that sense when you hear or perform it? It was something that was very important to many the 'pastoral' (psych-folk?) musicians of the 60s and 70s and, I believe, is also an important element of the continuing folk tradition amongst many singer/songwriters today, Listen, for example, to Dougie Maclean's music and it's there in spadesful. It's certainly alive and well in the music of some of the local musicians I listen to and love, such as Richard Grainger, Anna Shannon and Brother Crow, whose songs are especially poignant and meaningful when performed in the area about which they're written.

So, has the universal spread of folk music via recordings and broadcasts taken away the sense of place – in fact, did this happen when the collectors gathered the songs – and do you believe that this sense is still inspiring songwriters in the folk tradition today, as it certainly is in other arts?