Granite, a tough composite of quartz, feldspar & mica, is the stuff of Dartmoor, the most formidable of the five granite bosses punctuating Britain`s southwest peninsula. A miserable place of rain & bog or a sunny upland of exquisite natural beauty, here the elements are raw, the sky huge & nature seems ascendant. But it is no less a place made by human beings. Stone circles, crosses, dwellings & boundaries speak of the ancient, medieval & modern people that extracted a living from the moorscape & created what it is today. Where convicts are incarcerated, backpackers roam freely; where commoners graze livestock, the army is trained; where the National Park Authority exercises control, the Duchy of Cornwall claims ownership. & Dartmoor remains a place that provides. Reservoirs hold the water drunk by local people. China clay is extracted from its mineral reserves. Not long ago granite was quarried from its hillsides. What is modern Dartmoor & what should it be? Did druids officiate here? Can the bog be drained & crops grown? Is it the place for a prison? & what of its people`s future, & the fate of its ponies, cows & sheep? For three hundred years such questions have been asked of the moor. Quartz & Feldspar does not so much provide answers as unearth those who did & the arguments they provoked.